I spent a day at the restaurant Next photographing food, Michelin three-star chef Grant Achatz (pronounced ACKets) and the general kitchen commotion for Cooking Light’s 2011 Chef Awards issue.  Above is a placeholder, my loupe standing in for a truffled egg custard with salted cod roe.  We swapped plates to present a serving for one:

The menu that opened the restaurant was titled Paris, 1906 – Escoffier at the Ritz, and drew from Auguste Escoffier’s recipes.

Supremes de Poussin and poached cucumbers, filled with chicken mousse, wrapped in salt pork.  Beautiful, delicate.  Love the plates.  Yum, probably.   I regret the food wasn’t cooked to eat, but rather to be seen, so not entirely edible. Rotated 90 degrees clockwise they’d resemble a famous Japanese cartoon character, I think.

Chef Achatz in the kitchen and front-of-house -

I’d watched him eviscerate sea urchins in the kitchen at Trio in Evanston, Illinois some nine years earlier – taking a portrait then for Elle magazine.  One dish I’d shot then included a heated rock, topped by a dry oak leaf, then covered by a glass.  Accompanying a perfectly prepared red meat – I can’t remember which – to the table,  the glass was lifted and the smoke from the oak leaf wafted.  Cool.  Scans from film:

Work in Next the kitchen was performed with relaxed precision and extraordinary focus.  It was a real treat to watch.

Is there a draft in here?

I spent some time photographing beer and its Chicago co-conspirators for Imbibe magazine, working at four notable spots: Revolution Brewing (the cover), Hopleaf, The Map Room and Owen and Engine.

Drywall stilts come in handy -

Revolution Brewing is located about eight doors south of my studio.  How convenient.

Josh Deth, proprietor

Cask conditioning in the basement. And Little 500 bike parking.

in case you want to show loyalty to the Revolution -

The Hopleaf is an institution in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago. Owner Michael Roper is remarkably passionate and knowledgable about All Things Beer and Chicago politics.  I’m just guessing here, but I imagine the two go hand in hand.

Michael Roper, owner, Michael & Louise's Hopleaf Bar

The poured beer in each picture is Allagash, from Maine's Allagash Brewing Company, Portland. Roper's choice.We eventually found the Map Room in Bucktown. Check out the taps that run along the driver's side of the bar: none of them have the big ad levers. This way they can gang up more taps than usual and the bartender can work across the bar without getting lost in a forest of levers. Cool, eh?She too is drinking an Allagash.

A Reissdorf Kolsch, somewhere in the South Pacific.

Owen & Engine is more a restaurant than bar or pub, although it specializes in beers, and the pairing of those beers with their menu.  They have a certified cicerone on staff to hep you with that.

Cicerone Elliott Beier with his Two Brothers Hop Juice double IPA

Yes, Beier.

"Hoss" Rye Marzen, Great Divide Brewing Company

Thanks to Elliott I am a reformed hop-head.  I now favor bitter.  Good stuff, that.

He never blinks.  Note that no one in the image addresses him directly.  Either they are terrified or awestruck.  Or possibly, they distain the hearts on his bandana.  The mammoth Twinkie is oblivious. He stands vigil in a Davenport Iowa convention center as  15,000 runners pick up their bib numbers and souvenir t-shirts, and check out the competition for the Bix 7 race the next morning.  I am one of this throng.

Named for the local and accomplished jazz coronetist Bix Biederbecke, the race has little to do with jazz, unless you count footfalls:  it’s a 7 mile course on a bank of the Mississippi that features epic hills and purse money high enough to attract nine Kenyans this year.  Or, maybe it isn’t the purse, but the 30-foot stretch of tables just past the finish line.  They’re full of Twinkies.

The Kenyans finished in 32 – 36 minutes.  I finished in 53.  I figure they just wanted the Twinkies more than I did.

I’ve been to Cairo. Sadly, it’s been downhill ride there ever since shipping by river lost out to rail a long, long time ago. The streets were practically vacant when I arrived to complete a Chicago magazine assignment to photograph the Illinois stretch of the Mississippi river. I suppose it didn’t help much that it was raining, but I guess I did get a chance to photograph Cairo in its natural habitat.

When threatened by flood they fit this and other openings with gates.

Fort Defiance park is the southernmost point in Illinois -

Daryl Shemwell still runs a Barbeque place there, but I believe all the residents have been evacuated and his street’s been closed. Sinkholes.

I suppose this would be on a more federal level. Bronze Statue #4: on a recent trip to Washington DC, I found this guy inside his namesake giant obelisk.

American Bronzing claims to have bronzed over 14 million baby shoes since 1934. Although they also feature an image of a bronzed pacifier mounted on a walnut plaque, it doesn’t appear they go much further than tot stuff. The Bronzery, however, gives rates for adult ice skates ($338.95 and up for the pair). And boxing gloves ($606.95 and up per pair). Bowling pin? No prob. $235.95. A baseball’s $89.95, but a football must be problematic: “call for quote.” Rubber chicken. Bagel. Athletic supporter. Wow. I must confess it has me looking around my studio at things my own alchemy couldn’t transform.

I pulled five that, today at least, raised my eyebrows:

Pinhole photograph, Tamms Supermaximum Security Prison, Tamms Illinois. Shortly after the prison was opened, I had the opportunity to photograph the place for Chicago magazine. I’d heard the warden was especially proud of the cell doors, which featured holes, rather than bars. I shot this one with a homemade camera pressed against one of those doors, holding it for about fifteen seconds.

David Yow, lead singer for The Jesus Lizard, in a mosh pit at Chicago’s Vic Theater. I love grain.

Selmer Saxophone, Elkhart Indiana. I believe the lit box is how they put the music in ‘em.

I spent some time in Ukraine – Kiev and Yalta – on an assignment to photograph Katherine Yushchenko, their first lady at the time. This was on the bumpy flight to Yalta, after my film was sent through a 1960′s era x-ray machine. It ended well.

Sophia Loren, leaving a screening, Michigan Avenue, Chicago. In the early 1990s I was the Chicago International Film Festival’s official photographer. The fun never set.

More from the WSJ feature – one of my favorite views of Chicago is at the Michigan Avenue Bridge.  No matter what time of day, if the sun’s out the light bounces on the skyscraper windows, making the canyon gleam in unexpected places.

Schwa restaurant.  Octopus with pineapple, macadamia nut and char,  style of Hawaiian poke.

The Violet Hour, home of cocktails with a provenance -

Architect Lorenzo Piano designed the Modern Wing to the Art Institute – daytime, the gallery light is perfect. Nighttime, the outside’s a gem.

Richard Wright auction house -

The Isle of Man is a store specializing in men’s clothing and… umm.. accessories.  Like flamethrowers.

The family’s operated Drier’s Butcher Shop in Three Oaks Michigan for 98 years, though the space has been used that way for much longer.    It’s got much soul.

Indiana Dunes State Park has Mount Baldy, another destination for the Porter piece.  People trudge to the top then rocket to the bottom, tumbling and rolling most of the way.