Enjoy the “May flowers” and kick off your Monday with these stories from WTTW News.
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(Courtesy of Cariño)
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Three Chicago chefs were named James Beard Award finalists and we caught up with a couple of them.
The awards, often likened to the Academy Awards of the food world, recognize chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, critics and journalists in the United States. The awards ceremony will be held in June at the Lyric Opera in Chicago, where it’s been hosted for the last decade.
The local hopefuls are:
Bailey Sullivan, executive chef of Monteverde Restaurant and Pastificio, who’s nominated in the Emerging Chef category
Norman Fenton, the owner and executive chef of Cariño, who’s nominated for Best Chef: Great Lakes
Jake Potashnick, owner and executive chef of Feld, who’s nominated for Best Chef: Great Lakes
Feld:
Potashnick’s Feld, which holds one Michelin star, received another honor at Chicago’s Banchet Awards this year, winning Best New Restaurant and Best Hospitality.
Upon opening Feld in June 2024, Potashnick said he and his team realized they “were onto something special with the restaurant and what we were working on, and we just focused every single day on giving guests the best experience we possibly could and getting better every day and continuing to challenge ourselves regardless of the outside noise, and I think it really quickly paid dividends and showed, and really every review we’ve had since a month after opening has been glowing or positive.”
Stemming from the popular farm-to-table approach, Feld is known as a relationship-to-table space focusing on maintaining relationships and working with local farmers. Patrons are served 30 small seasonal dishes, making it one of the most unique dining experiences.
Cariño:
For Fenton’s Mexican-inspired, Michelin star-clad Cariño, being recognized is a testament to the chef’s sky-high standards.
“I’m a perfectionist that doesn’t believe you can reach perfection,” Fenton said. “A dish is never finished. It’s always evolving. It’s always taking a new form, so it’s never perfect. Never perfect. Always working on it.”
Cariño was inspired by Fenton’s time in Mexico where he met and fell in love with his wife. His work is expanding as he plans to open a new restaurant, Molino Los Hermanos, this summer.
Winners of the 2026 James Beard Awards will be announced June 15.
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A groundbreaking ceremony held earlier this year for Devereaux Peters’ affordable housing development project in South Bend, Ind. (Courtesy of Devereaux Peters)
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Former WNBA player turned housing developer Devereaux Peters wants people to rethink what affordable housing can look like, especially as more people struggle to keep up with increased housing costs.
“There’s a stigma with affordable housing,” Peters said. “Part of what I want to create is spaces that get rid of that stigma. … These could actually be beautiful spaces that are absolutely necessary and that will uplift communities.”
Peters — who formerly played for the Minnesota Lynx, Indiana Fever and the Phoenix Mercury before pivoting to housing development and real estate — is leading a project that aims to redevelop the former Bontemps Elementary School in West Englewood into an affordable housing development. The proposed design includes a 72-unit multifamily building and 60 units of housing for seniors.
The project is still about two years away from starting construction, as Peters works with partners on zoning changes, finalizing designs and architectural drawings, putting together a budget and getting enough funding.
The Bontemps Apartments project last month was awarded federal low-income housing tax credits through the city of Chicago. The award was part of a broader $300 million investment from the city going toward 15 affordable housing developments.
Bontemps Elementary was among the nearly 50 schools hit by CPS mass school closures in 2013 that primarily affected schools on the South and West sides. A decade after the closings, many former school buildings remained vacant or unused and had become a point of frustration for community members, WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times found.
“Englewood is a very difficult place to develop in because there has been so much disinvestment in that area,” Peters said. “It was a lot of pieces coming together at the right time for this to work.”
Peters said she took over the project from a business partner who began work about five years ago. Peters said an increased focus on redeveloping the shuttered schools, along with the development of the Englewood Nature Trail, made the timing for the project better.
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W.E.B. Du Bois seated at a desk in his office at Atlanta University, 1909. (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)
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Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer Rita Coburn is offering a fresh way to look back on the legacy of civil rights pioneer and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. In her new documentary, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause,” Coburn set out to explore parts of Du Bois’ story she felt had been neglected.
“I thought it was important to be expansive about this man,” Coburn said.
Coburn said Du Bois filled a unique niche in the history of civil rights activism, having been born just years after the Emancipation Proclamation, but dying on the eve of the 1963 March on Washington.
“(He was) not hampered by the rest of the Blacks, for the most part, in the South who were digging their way out of enslavement,” Coburn said. “He had generations of being free. … He took this massive intellect that he had and used it to go for civil rights.”
The documentary first explores Du Bois as a scholar. He was the first Black man to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, and his 1899 study “The Philadelphia Negro” is widely considered the first sociological study focused exclusively on an African American community.
“Of course, we’re in Chicago, so a lot of us know about ‘Chicago the Great Metropolis,’” Coburn said, referring to Horace Cayton’s landmark 1945 study. “But prior to that, the very first time that people went door to door and gathered data and research about Black people was with W.E.B. Du Bois, when he did that for Philadelphia.”
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More From WTTW News:
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Back in the Day: May 4, 1886 - The Haymarket Affair
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May 1886 was a tumultuous time for workers in the United States. The month kicked off with mass demonstrations for an eight-hour workday. While federal law already called for that, the federal government had failed to enforce its own rules and citizens took to the streets to call for action. On May 3, Chicago police shot and killed two striking protesters at the McCormick Reaper Plant in present-day Little Village. The following day, protesters gathered at Haymarket Square near Randolph and Desplaines streets. The action started peacefully, but when police entered the crowd to break up the action, a still-unidentified person threw a dynamite bomb at police. The cops fired back and
the event ended with seven CPD officers killed and an unknown but significant number of civilians killed and wounded. Following the riot, police arrested eight anarchist organizers and activists despite several not being present at the rally. Four were hanged. The actions led to May Day being celebrated on May 1 to commemorate workers worldwide. For further reading, check out WTTW’s “Key Moments in Chicago Labor History.”
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This Week’s Civic Events and Meetings
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Every Monday, WTTW News highlights the best ways to get involved with local government.
City Council's Joint Committee: Budget, Police and Fire
On Tuesday at 10 a.m., a joint committee of the Chicago City Council will hold a meeting on the budget of the police and fire departments. There will be a subject matter hearing with the Chicago Police Department and Office of Public Safety Administration on Q1 CPD Overtime Data and Early Intervention Systems (EIS) implementation, among other topics. For more information, click here.
City Club of Chicago
Join City Club of Chicago Thursday at noon for a roundtable discussion titled "Protecting Access: SNAP, Federal Policy, and Cook County's Response." Guests include Cook County Board of Commissioners President Toni Preckwinkle; Kate Maehr of the Greater Chicago Food Depository; Carolyn Barnes, associate professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School; and Dion Dawson, founder of Dion's Chicago Dream, a nonprofit combating food insecurity. Register and buy tickets here.
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What's your favorite Mexican restaurant in Chicago?
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published.
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5:30 PM | 10:00 PM
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry
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