Beloved chef for Bulls, Blackhawks cooked for players, team owners
Chef Hans Aeschbacher operated at the Chicago nexus of sports, food and fame.
As executive chef at the old Chicago Stadium and then the United Center in the early 1990s, he cooked for Bulls and Blackhawks players and their families as well as team owners.
Michael Jordan, Chris Chelios and other athletes called him “Chef ” or “Cheffy.” Two of his closest friends were Blackhawks alumni Stan Mikita and Cliff Koroll. He was like family to the late Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz.
Mr. Aeschbacher died April 4 after a long illness, according to his family. He was 80.
He grew up in Switzerland, speaking Swiss German. He had a thick accent, a broad smile and a remarkable knack for recalling people’s names and other details even from first encounters.
Mr. Aeschbacher later headed the kitchen for Smith & Wollensky, though keeping his close ties to the hockey team, which held executive meetings in a private room at the restaurant.
“He was part of the team, kind of,” said chef Steffen Iserloth, who worked with Mr. Aeschbacher at Smith & Wollensky and later at Chicago Cut Steakhouse.
Mr. Aeschbacher liked to join tables full of retired athletes, everyone telling old stories.
And he was known for telling endearingly flawed jokes.
“He told the worst jokes in the world — the worst,” said Jane Mikita Gneiser, Stan Mikita’s daughter. “He’d start with the punchline or forget the punchline and remember it 10 minutes later. It was so bad, it was funny.”
He was known for cooking at fundraisers and gathering auction items to benefit a wide range of not-for-profit organizations, including the March of Dimes.
“I learned from him long ago that material possessions aren’t worth anything,” said Mr. Aeschbacher’s son, also named Hans, who works in food services at Meta’s Chicago offices.
He remembers his father being given a basketball signed by Jordan and other players during the Bulls’ championship era and immediately donating it.
“I was, like, ‘Dad, don’t you want to keep it?’ ” the son said. “And he said, ‘It’s all about what you leave behind.’ ”
When Mr. Aeschbacher’s wife Esther was dying of cancer in 1999, he was struggling to pay her medical bills, and friends hosted a fundraiser at Mike Ditka’s Near North Side restaurant. Hundreds of people showed up, including sports notables Bobby Hull, Mark Grace, Peter Wirtz, Rod Beck, Bob Murray, Pat Brickhouse and Steve Trachsel.
Hockey great Wayne Gretzky, a friend from Mr. Aeschbacher’s previous job as a chef at the Forum in Los Angeles, sent memorabilia to auction off, and so did Joe Torre and Scotty Bowman.
Mr. Aeschbacher was well-known around Chicago, appearing on local TV shows as a guest chef, having his recipes run in newspapers and often being heard as a guest on radio shows, including those of Steve Dahl on WLS and Marc “Silvy” Silverman on ESPN 1000.
“I think the reason he maintained real relationships with so many people for so long was because he was memorable and friendly and warm,” said ESPN 1000’s Carmen DeFalco, a friend. “We’d go to Blackhawks games together, and he’d come with me and Silvy to try out new restaurants. And he came on Silvy’s bachelor party weekend in New Buffalo.”
DeFalco said Mr. Aeschbacher was a constant defender of his old friend Bill Wirtz, a controversial figure among Blackhawks fans. And he recalled how he would end any voicemail message he left with: “Auf wiedersehen, my friend.”
Mr. Aeschbacher was born Jan. 28, 1944, in a town not far from Bern, Switzerland. His father, Robert Hans Aeschbacher, was a civil engineer. His mother, Erna Bertha Haag, was a homemaker.
When Mr. Aeschbacher was 8, he was picking wild strawberries for his mother to can for winter and decided to pick a few extra to bring to town to sell. A storm came up. He took shelter at the Hotel Baren, a resort in the small Swiss town of Twann. The woman in charge of the resort’s kitchen bought his strawberries and fed him.
To show his thanks, he cleaned a 16-pound fish for her. She asked if he could come back to help in the kitchen. He apprenticed there
for three years, went on to study culinary arts and business and worked at fine dining restaurants in England and elsewhere in Europe. He served his mandatory military service in the Swiss army as a chef.
In the late 1960s, Mr. Aeschbacher, who was an avid skier, came to the United States on a visa to work at a ski resort in northern Michigan. That’s where he discovered chili, hot dogs and cheeseburgers — and the unfortunate fact the ski slopes in the Midwest aren’t at all like those in to the Alps.
It didn’t take long to find his culinary footing in his adoptive country. In the early 1970s, he worked at the French restaurant La Cheminee on the Gold Coast before heading the kitchen at Lawry’s Prime Rib for more than a decade.
“I remember Harrison Ford was eating at Lawry’s once, and my dad brought a phone to his table to say hello to me because I was a huge Indiana Jones fan, and I was home from school that day, sick as a dog,” his son said. “We spoke for, like, 10 minutes, and he was such a swell guy.”
Through his work as a chef, Mr. Aeschbacher also knew movie director John Hughes, which paved the way for an Aeschbacher family visit to the set of “Uncle Buck,” which was filmed around Chicago.
“We went in to John Candy’s trailer, and he was so cool and nice, and my dad gave him a Swiss army knife,” Mr. Aeschbacher’s son said.
For a few years beginning in 1986, Mr. Aeschbacher had his own place — Chef Hans’ Restaurant and Lounge at 7011 N. Western Ave.
In 2010, Mr. Aeschbacher helped open Chicago Cut Steakhouse and guided the restaurant through its first turn as host on Thanksgiving.
“He sat down with all the guys in the kitchen and me and said, ‘OK, we’re going to get here at 2 a.m., and that means you all have to be in bed at 8 p.m., and I want you to call me so I can hear there’s no background music,’” said David Flom, Chicago Cut’s managing partner. “We showed up, and he was dressed in all whites — like he was in the fanciest restaurant in Paris — and worked for 14 hours straight, showing everyone the right way to make turkey, gravy, stuffing, everything for 800 people.”
Mr. Aeschbacher treated everyone the same, from pro athlete to dishwasher.
“He wore his heart on his sleeve and had the mentality of ‘we’re all in this thing together,’” Iserloth said.
For decades, Mr. Aeschbacher was an avid supporter of the Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Kevin Delaney, who was a participant as a kid and now runs the program, visited Mr. Aeschbacher nearly every Friday and brought him lunch at the care facility in Niles where he spent the last part of his life.
“He would do the same for me,” said Delaney, who said Mr. Aeschbacher always insisted he bring enough food for staff and his friends when he came to visit. “I didn’t mind doing it at all. It tells you the type of person he was.”
“He challenged himself and challenged us to make a difference in other people’s lives,” said his friend Joanne Madura.
In addition to his son, Mr. Aeschbacher is survived by his daughter Elizabeth.