After spending much of last week with the nation’s media moguls at a conference in Idaho, Mayor Richard M. Daley basked this morning in the company of many of Chicago’s elite chefs.
The mayor joined about 50 stars of the local culinary scene at a news conference to promote the third annual “Chicago Gourmet” event, which will be held Sept. 25 and 26 at Millennium Park.
Daley said the event, which costs $150 per person to attend, fits perfectly with Chicago’s strategy to draw travelers seeking top-notch food and wine.
“These chefs, to me, represent the creative class of society,” he said. “We have to realize how important they are to the city.”
The mayor grew up near the stockyards on the city’s South Side but clearly enjoys the work and the company of the city’s haute cuisine devotees.
Rick Bayless, the owner of Frontera Grill and star of a popular public television show about Mexican cooking, praised Daley’s “unerring support for Chicago restaurants.” Snapping cell phone pictures of Daley was Billy Dec, owner of Rockit Bar & Grill, whose chef stood on the stage near the mayor.
Dec hit the town in Moscow last year with the mayor’s son, Patrick Daley, and shared video of their stroll through Red Square on YouTube (Scroll down to watch).
Chicago Gourmet attracted 8,000* people last year, said Sheila O’Grady, Daley’s former chief of staff who is president of the Illinois Restaurant Association. The association, together with the Anton Family Foundation and Bon Appetit magazine, is sponsoring the event this year.
The city is not providing any financing for this year’s event, O’Grady said. But she added, “He’s the best cheerleader for the industry that anybody could ask for.”
After the event, Daley told reporters about his trip to Idaho. He said he learned “how technology is changing drastically,” underscoring the importance of Chicago Career Tech, a new pilot program to retrain unemployed workers.
“One thing you learned about there is the technology is going to move so quickly in America,” he said. “All the things that Chicago can do that deals with technology — all the way from early childhood, elementary, high school, college, coming out of college — have to be technology-trained. In any job whatsoever, if you’re not in the future, they’re going to fail.”
Daley again defended the city’s new ordinance to regulate guns, approved less than two weeks ago after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively neutralized Chicago’s blanket ban on handguns. The new ordinance, which requires Chicagoans to register their guns and only permits them inside their homes, already has engendered legal challenges from gun-rights advocates.
*Correction: The original post incorrectly reported attendance for Gourmet Chicago at 3,000 people, rather than 8,000.