For decades, Charlie Trotter's name was synonymous with cutting-edge cuisine. His Chicago restaurant was regarded as one of the finest in the world — a stellar accomplishment for the self-taught chef, who died Tuesday at age 54.
Trotter earned a college degree in political science, but as he told NPR last year, he decided cooking was his calling, so he studied cookbooks, visited fine restaurants abroad, catered small parties at home and started working for prominent chefs.
"My motive was nothing more [than] to learn how to cook and explore the interesting components of the food and wine world," Trotter told Talk of the Nation's John Donvan. "I never had an agenda."
But Trotter said he did want to elevate American cooking. And in 1987, with the help of his father, he opened his own restaurant. He took the novel step of putting a table for guests in the kitchen.
He went on to write several cookbooks and host a PBS television series, The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter. His restaurant won Michelin stars, and Trotter won a James Beard Foundation award for outstanding chef in 1999.
Susan Ungaro, the president of the foundation, says Trotter told her that chefs are like musicians: "That every ingredient is like a musician's note, and he laughed and said, 'My father must have known I must have wanted to be a chef after he named me Charlie after Charlie Parker, the great jazz musician.' He was somebody who really took the artistry of cuisine to another level."
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