Brad A. Johnson
  • Blog
  • About
  • Photography
    • Food Photography
    • Travel Photography
    • Restaurant Photography
    • Hotel & Resort Photography
  • Writing
  • Contact
Brad A. Johnson

Food & Travel

Brad A Johnson
  • Blog
  • About
  • Photography
    • Food Photography
    • Travel Photography
    • Restaurant Photography
    • Hotel & Resort Photography
  • Writing
  • Contact

Blackbird, Chicago 1997 – 2020 (RIP)

  • July 3, 2020
  • Brad A. Johnson
Chicago’s Blackbird has closed. The restaurant announced this week that they were closing permanently, unable to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. 
This sucks. I don’t live in Chicago anymore, so I didn’t get to eat at Blackbird often. But the restaurant has always held a special place in my heart. Blackbird was one of the last places I reviewed for Sidewalk.com when I worked as a restaurant critic for Microsoft in Chicago in the ’90s. 
Blackbird, Chicago (Photo by Brad A. Johnson)

Blackbird broke the mold for Chicago restaurants when it debuted in November 1997. Everyone thought Donnie Madia had lost his mind for daring to open a restaurant on this derelict stretch of Randolph Street between Union Station and the Kennedy Expressway, at the time a no-go zone. The city’s hottest restaurant row sat just a few blocks away, but all that gentrification was safely on the other side of the freeway bridge. This stretch of Randolph was dead and dangerous. It was ugly. Most buildings on either side of Blackbird were decayed, boarded up and covered in graffiti, as was this restaurant’s storefront before acclaimed designer/architect Thomas Schlesser brought it back to life in stunning style. 

Chicago’s dining scene was already sizzling, driven as much by world-class interior design as by culinary talent. Still, the city had never seen anything like Blackbird. Schlesser, who previously built some of the city’s most fashionable nightclubs, stripped the abandoned building to its core and just barely penciled in a new aesthetic that reminded me of the Jetsons. Minimalist in the extreme, the 65 seat restaurant felt thrillingly futuristic — a bare rectangular box that looked like an oversized shipping container. Powerful energy radiated from the front window, which was completely exposed from ground to ceiling and stripped naked of curtains even in the dead of winter. Who would do that in Chicago? Who would do that in this neighborhood? It was a fishbowl of urban vitality. It was impossible to cruise along Randolph en route to somewhere else and not notice Blackbird. Not only notice, but to stop frozen in your tracks. It didn’t belong here. And yet it fit. 

I’d known Donnie Madia from previous restaurants and bars (none remotely this ambitious) such as Ooh, La La and Vinyl. He was the consummate host, always the best-dressed person in the room. I never saw him without a smile. He possessed the most important little black book in Chicago. He knew everyone, and everyone wanted to know him. He pulled together an extraordinary team — Schlesser the only one with any fame at that point — that included a young, untested chef named Paul Kahan. He tapped one of the city’s savviest, sexiest waiters, Eduard Seitan, to help run the dining room. 

Amuse bouche of winter vegetables at Blackbird, Chicago (Photo by Brad A. Johnson)

I’d been following Kahan’s cooking at Topolobampo and Erwin, both notable restaurants but places where he wasn’t the one who got credit for the food. At Blackbird, he introduced a modern riff on Midwestern cooking that surpassed anything else in the city. It was intensely elegant yet casual and fun. It was expensive but the opposite of stuffy. Weekends were immediately booked six weeks in advance, and they hadn’t even secured their liquor license yet when they opened (that wouldn’t come until more than a month later, at which point reservations became exponentially harder to come by). It took me five months to score the necessary three anonymous visits for a review. I wish I still had a copy of that story. I remember giving the restaurant a less than perfect score but being in love with it nonetheless. I looked forward to returning again and again. 

I moved from Chicago to San Francisco a few months after that, and I didn’t get back again until 2018. By then an institution, it was still as beautiful and mesmerizing as I remembered, the staff as magnanimous and professional as ever. Strangely, this time around the entire neighborhood had come of age and was vibrant and full of life. 

Blackbird, I miss you already.

For more travel inspiration and photos, I invite you to follow me and join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Share
Tweet
Brad A. Johnson

Brad A. Johnson is a writer and photographer specializing in food and travel. His work has been honored by the James Beard Awards, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards, World Food Media Awards, pdn Food Photography Awards and others. Based in Southern California, Brad currently serves as restaurant critic for the Orange County Register.

Previous Article

Photo of the Week: Pier 7, San Francisco

  • June 21, 2020
  • Brad A. Johnson
View Post
Next Article

Motel Review: Skyview Los Alamos

  • July 12, 2020
  • Brad A. Johnson
View Post
You May Also Like
View Post
  • California Hotels
  • Travel: Culinary
  • Travel: Mexico
  • Travel: United States

Best Travel Blog! Best Culinary Travel! Best Travel Photography! And this just in: Finalist, Food Photographer of the Year

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • April 1, 2021
View Post
  • California Restaurants
  • Travel: Culinary
  • Travel: United States

Quick Look: Niner Wine Estates, Paso Robles

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • August 15, 2020
View Post
  • California Restaurants
  • Travel: United States

Quick Look: Presqu’ile Winery, Santa Maria

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • July 18, 2020
View Post
  • California Hotels
  • Travel: United States

Motel Review: Skyview Los Alamos

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • July 12, 2020
View Post
  • Travel: United States

Photo of the Week: Pier 7, San Francisco

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • June 21, 2020
View Post
  • Travel: Adventure
  • Travel: Australia
  • Travel: Culinary

Australia’s Winter Truffles are in Season. Get Some While You Can!

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • June 17, 2020
View Post
  • California Restaurants
  • Travel: United States

Photo Diary: Eating and Drinking During the 2020 Quarantine

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • June 14, 2020
View Post
  • Travel: Asia
  • Travel: Culinary

The Disappearing Art and Rhythm of Chinese Tea in Hong Kong

  • Brad A. Johnson
  • April 27, 2020
Feeling blessed. Out of more than 10,000 entries from 70 countries, I've been shortlisted in two categories in the 2021 Food Photographer of the Year competition. Thank you, @foodphotoaward ⁠⁠ 97 18
Maybe I’m biased because I grew up eating this kind of sausage from the old German smokehouses in the Texas Hill Country, but I believe the dry hunter sausages from Central Europe — landjäeger, gyulai, cabanossi and the like — are some of the best charcuterie in the world. And I finally found them in OC at Mattern Sausage Deli in Orange. Story online now at ocregister.com @ocregister⁠⁠ 99 6
How to gain 5 pounds in 1 week. ⁠⁠ 168 30
When's the last time your poured yourself a purple drank? ⁠⁠ 181 8
It’s starting to look like a light at the end of this dark tunnel. Please get vaccinated as soon as you can, and continue to keep others safe and comfortable even after you’ve gotten your shots. This isn't over. ⁠⁠ 160 13
Daydreaming of New York. If you get a chance, pick up a copy of the @ocregister newspaper today. It explains my recent posts. 50 2
Brad A. Johnson
  • Blog
  • About
  • Photography
  • Writing
  • Contact
Writer. Photographer. Traveler. Restaurant Critic.

Input your search keywords and press Enter.