Celebrated Chicago chef thrives in Michigan
She goes to bed when most people are getting home from work and she wakes at 2 a.m., says goodbye to her dog and two cats and walks the dark, treelined and silent seven blocks to work.
In those early hours, she bakes, a relatively new calling for her — “I did not ever bake until five years ago but I love to do it,” Jackie Shen says — creating cookies, breads, muffins and other treats that are sold in the small shop that sits at the rear of her Jackie’s Café in New Buffalo, that Michigan town across the lake.
That is where she spends the rest of her days, in the kitchen cooking breakfasts and lunches.
She locks up at 3 p.m. and walks home and she is happy.
“I have calm here,” she says. “I don’t miss the noise of the city. I don’t miss what has become this intense competition in the restaurant world.”
Once firmly at the center of a relatively small circle that has grown to become Chicago’s culinary circus, she was among the first of that ever-expanding species known as celebrity chefs.
She came to this country from Hong Kong in 1971 and after college in Iowa and Houston, she learned the food business under the late legendary chef Jean Banchet, who ran Le Francais in Wheeling; ran her own restaurant for a dozen years; worked for the Levy Restaurants and headed the kitchens at such places as Chicago Cut Steakhouse, City Tavern, Lawry’s and, for nearly a decade, Red Light.
She found New Buffalo in 2012, coming to oversee the rebuilding and operation of the kitchen at the Stray Dog Bar and Grill as it was recovering from a fire.
“Thirty minutes after I got off the train, I knew that I would move here,” she said. “I enjoyed working at the Stray Dog and I sold my Chicago house and bought a little house here and then the café came up for sale and here I am.”
If those of us who frequented the original Jackie’s may not be able to recall specific dishes, know that she will ever be remembered and revered for inventing the now fairly ubiquitous chocolate bag dessert. That was in 1984, when she ran her own place, Jackie’s on Lincoln Avenue.
One morning last week she was making fudge, as energetic and ebullient as she has always been.
“My goal this season is to make 1,000 pounds,” she said.
She has made fudge before, for more than a dozen years in Chicago to benefit Esperanza Community Services in the West Town neighborhood.
“I was asked [in 1998] when I was the chef at Lawry’s, to donate any leftover food to help feed the people at Esperanza,” she said. “Some of us thought that it would be better to help raise money around Christmas time. So, this fudge idea was born.”
She has always been an admirable soft touch. She arranged a food-focused benefit with 20 chef friends for Mississippi River flood victims in 1993 and organized a similar event for Chicago Animal Care and Control and other organizations. Now her fudge helps some of her new neighbors.
“There is need everywhere,” she says. “So, the first year we sold the fudge to raise money for the library so that iPads could be purchased for seniors.”
She has also used her fudge to aid the local Rotary and this year the money raised will go to the River Valley Senior Center. It can be ordered now, at $14 a pound (with a matching $14 donated by the Larry Bubb Endowment and all money going to RVSC). She has started making it already and orders will be available for pickup at the café or can be mailed after Thanksgiving. In a refreshing old-fashioned manner, there is no way to email or text your orders. You must call 269-469-1800.
“I am technologically challenged,” says Shen, who is 67. “But I also like to talk to people.”
There is not a day, especially during the frenzied summer months, when a customer, perhaps jolted by the sophistication and creativity of the menu item or catching sight of the diminutive chef in the kitchen, doesn’t ask one of the servers, “Is Jackie the Jackie?”
For those unfamiliar with her past stature, there are some subtle hints. In a bathroom are photos of some former customers. There is Ann Landers and Irv Kupcinet and, not so notably, me, for I have known Jackie and her food for decades. And, for a real nostalgic kick, there is a framed menu signed by two of her best customers and biggest fans.
Mike Royko wrote: “Jackies? What kind of joint don’t serve no cheeseburger? Well, your chow ain’t half bad. It’s even terrific.”
Studs Terkel wrote: “For Jackies, Here’s to good living — good food — good friends.”
Royko met Shen through his wife, Judy, who lived near Jackie’s on Lincoln Avenue.
“I met her at the neighborhood laundromat. I was doing clothes and she was doing tablecloths,” says Royko. “She became such a good friend to me and to Mike. And she is such a giving person, such a big heart. When my mom was dying of cancer in a hospital on her 80th birthday, Jackie brought over a beautiful dinner for the whole family.”
“I know all about her New Buffalo place. Friends tell me how great it is. I can’t wait to visit, to eat there, to see her again.”
Shen doesn’t get back to Chicago often, though she makes occasional trips to a new acupuncturist and will, less frequently, “visit Chinatown for dim sum.”
Jackie’s Café, unlike some of the area’s seasonal businesses, remains open during the winters, when the area can get particularly snow crushed.
“But it is always peaceful for me, no matter the weather,” said the chef. “I will retire with this café. I am old enough to know what I want to do and to know my limits.”
If you are in the neighborhood, Jackie’s Café is not hard to find. It’s at 801 W. Buffalo St. at the corner of — and isn’t this just perfect? — Chicago Street.