Call him crazy, but Chef Darnell Reed is a hospitality aficionado who believes the customer who walks in five minutes before closing deserves the same care as anyone else. Chef Reed started cooking professionally at 16 and spent nearly two decades working his way through Chicago’s hotel kitchens, eventually becoming executive chef at the Conrad. He joins us to talk about leaving that world to open Luella’s Southern Kitchen, the acclaimed restaurant inspired by the food and hospitality of his great-grandmother. We discuss the mentors who shaped him, the discipline he carried from hotels into restaurant ownership, Luella’s evolution from a tiny Lincoln Square dinner spot into an Albany Park brunch destination, and his belief that the last guest through the door deserves the same welcome as the first. Plus: getting strong-armed into culinary school by a high school teacher, making chicken and waffles for Reggie Miller, learning the secret to his great-grandmother’s cornbread, the best way to clean a cast-iron skillet -- and so much more!
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