‘There’s something really magical’
One year in, Foodball at Kedzie Inn keeps showcasing Chicago’s most innovative food
Located on the Northwest Side of Chicago where Albany Park and Irving Park meet, the Kedzie Inn looks like any neighborhood bar with its worn hardwood floors, mini pool table, collection of vintage beer signs and obligatory flatscreens. Outside, its name sits proudly below a Pabst Blue Ribbon-logoed sign that lights up at night.
What sets the Kedzie Inn apart from the hundreds of others like it, however, is that it’s the neighborhood bar of Mike Sula, the Chicago Reader writer who, since 1995, has been reviewing the city’s big-name restaurants in addition to telling the stories of off-the-radar dining options and the people behind them.
Unusual food stuff is another area Sula has explored. His “Chicken of the Trees” article about eating squirrels, a story born out of his frustration with the furry varmints eating the tomatoes in his home garden year after year, earned a James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing award in 2013.
Last August, Sula switched teams, so to speak, and became a part-time restaurateur himself when he, with the help of Kedzie Inn owner and friend Jon Pokorny, started Monday Night Foodball. What started out as a limited-run, seven-week pop-up restaurant featuring a rotating mix of industry folk — think classically
trained chefs, caterers, self-taught cooks, home cooks and culinary school grads — celebrates its one-year anniversary this month with no immediate plans to stop.
Even before the pandemic, Sula and Pokorny had been batting around the idea of doing a pop-up of sorts at the bar. Pokorny, fresh from his January 2020 victory over Sula in the Kedzie Inn’s annual chili cook-off, was eager for more food competition bragging rights. (For the record, says Sula, “I definitely hold some grudges, as I’ve never won.”)
Once the pandemic lockdown hit with the temporary closures of restaurants and bars, the idea shifted to hosting the virtual chefs Sula had been writing about in the Reader who channeled their creative culinary skills and social media savvy to craft and sell to-go and delivery meals.
“These weren’t celebrated Chicago chefs with household names,” Sula says. “They were line cooks, bartenders and servers who were making some interesting, super-creative food that never would have gotten greenlit in a brick-and-mortar restaurant setting. These were personal concepts, collaborative mashups, tributes to their grandmothers and cuisines that don’t exist in Chicago.”
When pandemic restriction eased and with encouragement and support from the Reader, Sula and Pokorny got Foodball rolling.
“For me, it was an opportunity to give these chefs a chance to cook a la minute, fresh out of a kitchen instead of having their food wither away in a Styrofoam clamshell,” says Sula, who acts as host, food runner and busser. “Foodball was a chance for people to try their food hot and fresh.”
Adds Pokorny, “It’s an opportunity for these chefs to do something they haven’t tried before and build their brand without having to go through the ranks of a high-level kitchen.”
To participate, the chefs assume all food costs and provide all disposable items. The Kedzie Inn doesn’t charge any fees, so participants keep all the money they make. Added bonus: The bar has a large, fully functional kitchen.
Pokorny sees the familiar ambiance of Kedzie Inn as a plus for the unusual food being presented at Foodball. “For a lot of people who had never tried a certain cuisine before, this is an environment to do that in, as you’re in a neighborhood bar and it’s not intimidating.”
The Foodball menus have featured cuisines from all over the world, as well as ones unique to Chicago and the people making them.
Giong Giong, the debut concept, featured Vietnamese Guatemalan street food from chefs Jeanette Tran (head of private dining at Oriole) and David Hollinger (Aya Pastry). There’s been Malaysian food from Kedai Tapao, a Foodball favorite with repeat appearances. Galit pastry chef Mary EderMcClure and Butter Bird Bakery’s Kat Stuerhk Talo tapped into their heritages with a Lebanese Armenian feast. Mike “Ramen Lord” Satinover hosted two soldout Foodballs, as did Ethan Lim of celebrated restaurant Hermosa, who offered Khmer street food. Some opted to decorate the bar while others brought in live music and dancers. Others added a charity component to their pop-up.
For all the Foodballs, Pokorny either creates a specialty cocktail that complements the flavor profiles of the food being served or offers a beer from the cuisine’s country.
During its yearlong run, Foodball has earned many diehard fans, a mix of nearby residents, Kedzie Inn regulars and Sula enthusiasts, who learn of the pop-up dinners through his weekly Reader articles and social media posts.
Jaime Levonian counts himself in the Sula fan club category. “I’ve gone to a lot of the restaurants Mike has promoted and found out that most of the time I agreed with his reviews. He became my guiding light for restaurants,” Levonian said. “Mike has always championed the little guy, the independents. I love that persuasion as well.” Of the 40 or so Foodballs that have taken place so far, Levonian has missed only three.
Foodball, however, is much more than the terrific food served on its paper plates. Week after week, it has become a vibrant source of stories of survival, reinvention, memories, family and reconnecting with one’s heritage, all told through the context of food.
Take, for example, Umamique’s Charles Worth, who left a career in finance to concentrate on his smoking and barbecue business in 2019. Since then, Worth and Odesza, his 22-foot red mobile road pit, have been very busy hosting catering events and pop-ups. Umamique will make its second Foodball appearance Sept. 19. “It’s great to be able to give a space to someone who doesn’t do it full time who can share their story with people,” Worth says of the Foodball concept.
For SuperHai’s Jane Shang and Jordan Ross, who did a Foodball in July and host a weekly one on Wednesdays at Ludlow Liquors, the pop-up format offers them the perfect system for their culinary passions, while also allowing them to pursue other interests. For Shang that’s graphic design, and for Ross, formerly a butcher at Publican Quality Meat, knife sharpening and restoration.
“Long term for a restaurant is really difficult in today’s climate with rent prices and everything,” Shang says. “We never even thought we’d make it this far, so we are grateful to be here.” Adds Jordan Ross: “It’s great working for ourselves now and meeting all these other cool people and finding an actual supportive food community.”
Volition Tea’s Annie Xiang, an importer of single-origin, looseleaf Chinese teas who partnered with SuperHai and served tea mocktails, has similar feelings about pop-ups. “I feel having a brick-and-mortar would tie me down, whereas now I’m more mobile and can do more business development and peruse more opportunities.”
Joey Pham, who has “headlined” two Foodballs, including a Vietnamese Italian mashup, as well as helped others numerous times in the kitchen, appreciates the less stressful environment pop-ups can offer.
“We’re at a time when people recognize it is extremely difficult financially, mentally, physically and emotionally to sustain a brick-and-mortar, let alone open one,” Pham says. “Part of the fun at Kedzie is that we can take our dream and creativity and apply it somewhere for one night. There’s something really magical about that.”
And Pham’s not the only one who sees the magic and possibilities of the Foodball experience.
“The question I got the most during lockdown was: What are you going to write about?” says Sula, who actually found he had too much to write about. “That summer there was a great reckoning in general as well as in the restaurant industry with people talking about equity and reinventing toxic restaurant culture. I started to see people come out of that. I didn’t think the restaurant industry in Chicago was dying. Rather, these people are the future.”