Notes from the Kitchen
The North Shore was built for this kind of evening.
I have cooked in a lot of homes up here, and they share something. The kitchens are generous. The dining rooms were made for people to linger. The houses in Winnetka, Wilmette, Glencoe, Kenilworth, and Lake Forest were designed, whether anyone said it out loud, around the idea of gathering. They are waiting for a long dinner with lots of loved ones. Their wine cellars are waiting their turn to shine alongside a meal worthy of that special bottle.
What they are not built for is you spending that dinner at the stove. That is the part I take off your hands.
Getting a group downtown for a real tasting menu means cars, a reservation, and someone always leaving early to get back north. None of that has anything to do with the meal. When I cook in your home instead, the evening belongs only to the people in the room. No one drives anywhere. No one is rushed out for the next seating. The best table in the house is the one you already own.
There is also something about a familiar room. People settle in differently at home. The conversation goes somewhere a restaurant never quite allows. I get to cook for that, plating each course a few steps from where you are sitting, watching the night unfold instead of hearing about it secondhand from behind a pass.
Every North Shore evening is its own. A small anniversary dinner in Kenilworth. A summer table on a Lake Forest porch as the light goes long. A milestone birthday in Glencoe where the guest of honor never lifts a finger. Some hosts want a seasonal tasting menu that unfolds slowly across the night. Others want something looser, passed bites and a full glass while people drift between rooms. I shape the food to the house and the occasion, not the other way around.
I keep my work close to these neighborhoods deliberately. It means I know the farms and purveyors nearby and what is good this particular week. When you reach out, you are not booking a downtown operation that treats your home as a long drive. You are inviting someone who cooks here all the time and absolutely loves it.
Chef Francis Pascal, founder of Vendador
We cook throughout Kenilworth, Winnetka, Lake Forest, and the North Shore, bringing the full kitchen with us.
