Chef Paul Fehribach To Revive Great Lakes Food Culture

Reader Contribution by Lily Baker Of Familyfarmed.Org
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For Paul Fehribach, Good Food isn’t just about taste. Good Food, cooking, and running a restaurant are about history, food politics, and sustainability as much as they’re about taste and business sense. I sat down with him recently at his buzzing Andersonville, Ill., restaurant, Big Jones, to learn what drives him, and what’s behind his two new business prospects: a low-key, Southern inspired po’boy and butcher shop, and a tavern and brewery offering Midwestern farmhouse cooking.

Fehribach is a font of knowledge about the history of the American food system, and American regional cuisine. Big Jones plays on that knowledge in a big way. From the maps of the South adorning the walls, to a menu dotted with mentions of local family farms, heirloom crop varieties, and even the dates of origin for some of his signature recipes, Big Jones is a restaurant with a serious sense of place.

That sense of place, as well as a concern for sustainability, drives both of Fehribach’s new business plans as well. The project he’s most excited about, a Midwestern tavern and brewery sourcing 100% local ingredients, will delve even further into history. Tentatively titled Nonesuch, after one of Johnny Appleseed’s famous antique cider apples, the restaurant will feature what Fehribach calls “proud Midwestern farmhouse cooking.”

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