Almost Famous
 shi la rosa |  steve tapas |  augustus rose |
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 jack jettison |  Screen Shot 2018-05-07 at 9.46.49 AMDescribe your image. |
The Talent
shi la Rosa
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Dual Identify of a Songstress
By McKayla Braid
Like any hard-working college student, Rachel Colonna worked feverishly to finish her class project before participating in extracurricular activities—which, in her case, was singing for a crowd. She missed a week of school for the opportunity to perform in unofficial showcases at South by Southwest, but was adamant about getting her classwork done on time.
Rachel Colonna is a graduating senior at Loyola University studying creative advertising and visual communications. She is also Shi la Rosa, a pop singer who writes and performers her own music.
Colonna was art director for a class advertising project to be submitted to a prestigious competition. Because her classmates were counting on her, Colonna edited video for the project while waiting to go on-stage.
“You can let yourself down and let your own grades slip, but you can’t let the grades and opportunities of everyone else slip because of you,” Colonna says.
As if the pressure of being a student wasn’t enough, Colonna also had to navigate how to get attention as a pop artist in the south where big bands with a variety of instruments are favored, according to Colonna.
“I feel like once you start getting into it, people will get into it and people started paying attention. But if I froze up people will pay less and less attention. It was kind of an attention game for a lot of the tour,” Colonna says.
She describes playing a midday show in a bar in Austin, Texas, where people were in the bar to have a drink, and weren’t much interested in listening to a pop singer. After singing one song, Colonna climbed down from the stage and began performing while making her way around the bar. People kept turning their heads to look at her and eventually started bobbing their heads along with the music.
Colonna chose her stage name, Shi la Rosa, to honor her grandmother, Rosa, who died when she was five. Although her grandmother could only speak Italian, Colonna felt a closeness to her.
She describes her music as indie pop and compares her sound to that of Banks and Lorde. Her music has a heavy electronic influence, but her vocals are mostly unedited as she sings “Sometimes I, sometimes I, sometimes I think of you,” while the bass booms in the background.
Her EP “Sometimes I think of you,” available on SoundCloud, consists of a five-song collaboration with her producer, Drew Jensen, better known as Sink Slow. The two started bouncing ideas off each other, and within two days all five songs on the EP were written.
They first met when Jensen was working as an audio engineer for a performance of a small choir Colonna was a part of. He put out microphones to capture the singers’ voices, but kept moving them closer to Colonna because her voice was unique.
Jensen was so impressed with her vocals that after the performance the he introduced himself and offered to collaborate on music with her. “I didn’t give Rachel any direction. Rachel honestly didn’t give me any direction, we just said, ‘Let’s make a song,’ and within an hour [or two] we had written two songs,” Jensen said.
He likes to mix Colonna’s voice with instruments like the kalimba, guitar and bass.
Colonna describes her EP as a documentation of a dark period in her life when she was feeling depressed and alienated.
“I felt like no one was there to listen or tell me that I’m worth their time. And so, I kind of had to grow some even thicker skin and be like, ‘All right, if no one is going to be there for you, then you better be there for you.’ ”
When Colonna recently performed as Shi la Rosa at the HVAC Pub in the Wrigleyville neighborhood, she climbed onto the stage and helped her producer set up his equipment, before encouraging the crowd to sing and dance along with. She showed off her vocals as she belted “Take me, higher, higher, higher,” swaying as the blue and red lights flashed.
When she’s on stage, Colonna’s performance looks effortless, but performing didn’t come easy for her. Before her junior year of high school, she had never sung in front of a crowd—even her closest friends didn’t know she sang. But she overcame her fear by singing in her school’s talent show.
To minimize her nervousness, she likes to drink tea before a show to help her relax. “I wish they had tea at venues but only grandmothers drink tea on Friday nights, so I try to drink water since there’s never tea,” Colonna says.
Despite having overcome her stage fright, Colonna still faces obstacles to making her passion a career.
“My parents are immigrants, so they always stressed ‘Oh take math classes and study hard and get into a good college and stop pursuing this stuff because we want you to have a good career and stability.’ So, they weren’t super encouraging of my art, because they wanted a better life for me,” says Colonna.
Her father comes from Italy and her mother from Brazil, and Colonna says that the patriarchy built into the cultures meant that, growing up, she and her brother were treated differently. For instance, when Colonna was expected to set the table for dinner, her brother got to watch TV.
Colonna says Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” made her a feminist, with its message of empowerment. “I’m everything you’re ever going to need just because I’m strong too,” she says. “ I can do anything I want to—you can’t tell me what to do.”
And just like Houston’s music inspired Colonna, Colonna has inspired artists with hers. Laina Joy, who moved to Chicago a few months ago, saw Colonna in concert and was moved by the performance. “Her voice is so ethereal and amazing and you’re just blown away,” Joy says.
Joy created a watercolor portrait of Colonna and was able to give her a print. The portrait is bold and vibrant--just like how Joy views Colonna.
Colonna recalls how Joy gave her the picture at an art show: “She grabbed a print and came back and brought the art she had done of my face and I’m like, ‘This is so sweet,’ and I have it in my room. It made my night and was the coolest thing ever.”
Getting a spot in an unofficial showcase may not seem like a big deal, but bands who performed in last year’s unofficial showcase were able to perform officially this year, Colonna says.
Colonna says that her EP doesn’t showcase the full extent of her talent, and she is eager to continue making music.
“Singing about being broken-hearted is cool and I do that sometimes,” she says. “But I want to be able to be the strong one. I want to be like, ‘Sometimes I think of you, but sometimes I don’t. Sorry I’m not going to cater to all of your needs—I have my own.’”
Steve
Tapas
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Made You Laugh
By Emma Jackson
When stand-up comedian Steve Tapas was 18, he wanted to be president—or just rich. But since the word “career” freaks him out and his resume resembles “Frankenstein’s monster,” the path to the presidency wasn’t going to happen.
Taking inspiration from Daisy Buchanan of the classic “The Great Gatsby,” Tapas hoped to be “dumb, rich and pretty.” Instead, he’s couchsurfing between comedy gigs and he’s more content than he ever thought possible. After regaining his confidence as a comedian, he’s able to pursue what he truly enjoys—getting people to laugh.
“In terms of personal fulfillment I think [comedy] was the shit. I was doing it to cope with all the shit I didn’t like doing,” Tapas says. “I was just trying to make people laugh.”
LaRoyce Hawkins, a friend Tapas met from the TV show “Chicago P.D.,” says Tapas’ confidence has improved during his sets.
“I always told him that if he had a certain amount of confidence in his material on stage that we would trust him as a comedian, and that’s what I’ve noticed him do,” Hawkins says. “When he trusts himself and trusts his instincts, then he’s extremely disciplined.”
Tapas describes his humor as “the funny kind. Seriously.” He’s perfectly comfortable with his content and he owns the stage with a relaxed confidence.
But he wasn’t always confident. Tapas went through high school and college pursuing something else entirely: sports and economics, respectively. Growing up in Chicago, he split his time living in the Streeterville neighborhood with his dad and in the suburb Wheeling with his mom. He always enjoyed being on stage, and was involved with theater while in elementary school. But according to his father, Chris Tapas, comedy was something Steve picked up on after college.
After graduating from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he used his economics degree for about six months. He then spent a year in Spain studying and teaching English in a bilingual middle school.
It wasn’t until the assistant director for “Win it All,” a movie about gambling, stayed on his couch during filming that Tapas got back into performing. Tapas pulled out a deck of cards and started playing while the assistant director filmed him. When director Joe Swanberg saw him playing, Tapas got cast as an extra in a poker scene of the movie. Some of Tapas’ friends he grew up playing cards with ended up being cast as extras as well. Tapas got some laughs and thought, “Yeah, I don’t suck at this.”
His second aha moment was when he got his first callback while reading for a pilot of Comedy Central’s “South Side.” The show is a comedy set in the South Side of Chicago. Tapas had the “Elvis leg” on camera while reading for the writers of the show, but he was able to improvise and make them laugh, which upped his confidence level.
The third aha moment was when he was contributing radio sketches for the Final Edition, a satirical online publication. That was an era of unapologetic comedy that he and his brother grew up watching. The Final Edition really motivated him because he says it is still committed to the same humor.
Since quitting his full-time job, he’s now able to attend open mics and bounce between different projects. He’s currently working on a late-night talk show parody called “Same Shit, Different Late Night,” where he performs with his friends John and Pat, and his brother Alex at Kamehachi in Old Town.
He’s also collaborating with fellow comedian and fraternity brother Erik Scott to create a web series. They balance making money with doing what they love. “It’s just a matter of finding out how to make money, while also doing what you love without sacrificing the part that you like about it,” Scott says.
Although it took him awhile to realize it, comedy has been much more fulfilling for Tapas than his previous jobs. “Comedy is just like a choice, right?” Tapas says. “It’s like being somebody’s friend. It feels like a lot of work and it feels like a job, but at the end of the day you feel better having done it.”
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Augustus
Rose
Rose's Secret Garden
By Maria Maynez
In a cozy office located on the second floor of the Midway Studios at the University of Chicago, a skylight view and a few windows replace fluorescent lighting. A set of turquoise color doors, are vibrant against the white walls. Augustus Rose, author of “The Readymade Thief” and full-time teacher in the Creative Writing Department, proudly mentions that he painted them as an homage to French artist Marcel Duchamp.
Although this is not Rose’s first book, “The Readymade Thief” was his first published novel. Starting in the summer of 2012, it took Rose six months of research and four and a half years of writing to get the book to the stage where it could be published. With the help of his wife, author Nami Mun, Rose found himself multitasking as a primary caregiver to their son, fitting in writing whenever he could. “The Readymade Thief” has been described to be in the category of “Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem.
“I got it to the stage where I thought it was pretty good. I finally gave it to my agent and I didn’t know if she would hate it or give it the thumbs-up,” says Rose. “Then I got a call a week later.”
In his office sits a tall mahogany bookcase that holds colorful books about Duchamp, and around his office are subtle hints to the artist who has served as an inspiration for Rose as he wrote his novel.
“I remember finding this book on Duchamp and I was looking through it and I still remember ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’ by Her Bachelors, Even’ and there’s something about that picture that just totally struck me,” says Rose. “I’ve just been fascinated with him ever since.”
It was not easy for Rose to spend almost two decades of writing and not publishing. As a former film student from University of California, Santa Barbara, Rose’s frustration pushed him to return to writing screenplays. He spent around two years writing screenplays, which led to the creation of “Far From Cool.”
“I kind of based it a lot on my experience in junior high and high school in San Francisco in the ’80s and was kind of a very dark coming-of-age story,” says Rose.
“Far From Cool” was about a lonely high school sophomore who befriends the rebel kid who turns out to be a sociopath. This screenplay led to Rose becoming a finalist for the prestigious 2015 Academy Nicholl Fellowship, but it never found a producer. With his experience from writing screenplays, Rose returned to writing novels where he began to write “The Readymade Thief.”
“ I think it helped [me] finally write a novel I could sell, after screenwriting. For a couple of years, something clicked and I knew how to plot a novel,” says Rose.
Will Boast, author and fellow teacher at the University of Chicago, describes “The Readymade Thief” as inventive. It touches on subjects about alchemy and secret societies, but does an impressive job of keeping the reader hooked, he says.
“It’s a very ambitious book and has a lot of intellectual reach. I know that Gus is very interested in the wide variety of things and has a lot of curiosity,” says Boast.
Rose describes himself as an author who dislikes outlining a story and prefers a more free write, and discovering where things go. Many times there is a lot of “extraneous” material that doesn’t really serve the book, he says, but it is through the extraneous material that the novel came to be.
“It’s part of what I like about writing. It’s that discovery process and so that’s what I did and that’s how this novel kind of came to be,” says Rose.
Colleague and friend Rachel DeWoskin has worked alongside Rose for seven years. DeWoskin describes Rose as a person who is observant to the world around him. His qualities can be seen through his main character Lee, she says.
“As a person, I would describe Gus to be extremely observant and thoughtful. He is very intellectually curious. He listens to people carefully and I think those qualities serve him not only as a person but also as a writer,” says DeWoskin.
Rose likes to write about areas that he is interested in. These areas include: Duchamp, urban exploration, quantum physics and French science and alchemy, among other things. However, Rose did not have a clear sight of what he wanted his angle to be while writing “The Readymade Thief.”
The first few tries at writing the book included different angles with different variations of Duchamp as a character. All were flawed, says Rose, and never to his liking.
“At first I started writing with [Duchamp] himself as a character and that wasn’t working and so I threw that all out,” says Rose.
Rose claims that while trying to figure what the story would be, he had a vision of a young woman sitting alone in a derelict aquarium. There was a precambrian seascape and prehistoric creatures, and a small note left for her. With this, Rose began to write “The Readymade Thief.”
“I didn’t know anything about who she was or what the story was, but that really intrigued me; that she was in this abandoned space. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody’s was supposed to know where she was and yet somebody had left a note for her there,” says Rose.
Rose talks about his first interaction with Duchamp at around the age of 18 or 19 while working at a used bookstore. He remembers shelving books and finding a book on Duchamp. Now this wide but thin book sits among various copies of “The Readymade Thief” in a bookshelf in his office. The image of “The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even,” is the image that has stayed with Rose ever since he saw it.
“He was such a fascinating figure!” says Rose. “He was so cerebral and intelligent, but he was also really playful and funny. He did was kind of designed to cause ripples and if not scandal within the art world.”
Within The Readymade Thief, Duchamp plays a big role for the main character. `There is the underground Society Anonime, inspired by Duchamp critics and their different interpretations of art, the Society Anonime, is a group of men who are “Duchamp Obsessed.”
Most importantly, Duchamp is prominent in the book through Rose’s usage of two of his most famous works of art, “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors Even” also known as “Large Glass,” and one of his assisted readymades, “With Hidden Noise”.
“It [‘The Bride Stripped Bare’] tells the story of this unrequited love or desire between the bride, who's on the top part of the sculpture, and the nine bachelors who are on the bottom. They're all kind of lusting after her,” says Rose. “‘The Large Glass,’ to me--that's his greatest work and I love the history behind it. He spent like 10 years working methodically on this piece.”
“Large Glass” and its story of an unrequited love between the bride and the nine bachelors who are lusting after her, became an integral part of the story as it reflects the relationship between the character Lee and the Society Anonime, which Rose created for his book.
“I think metaphorically it's just got all this stuff going on about unrequited desire and about this bride who's kind of the object of attention of these nine bachelors who are all fixated on her and want her and she's sort of indifferent to them,” says Rose.
Back in his office, Rose shows off a replica of Duchamp’s assisted readymade “With Hidden Noise” sits. He explains that it consists of a ball of twine between two brass plates with an unknown item inside that rattles. This is an integral part of the story and its plot.
“The mystery of it is interesting as long as it could be anything, then suddenly it still holds some sort of interest and intrigue and I like that idea and I think that’s something very much in tune with narrative,” says Rose.
Despite having one book out, Rose claims that it won’t be the last one that he will write. Time may be hard to manage and Duchamp may be out of the question for another story, but Rose confirms that he hopes to publish soon.
“I definitely plan to develop more in all ways as teacher and as a writer and there will definitely be more books in my future, I am working on one right now, it's just the question of how much time I have to devote to it and how quickly I can finish it, but there will be, hopefully, many more down the line,” says Rose.
Jack
Jettison
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He Who Rocks
By Tessa Brubaker
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It’s a dark basement located in the heart of Logan Square. People fill corners and chat, the sound of laughter echoing throughout the small, confined area. The scene is set to look tropical. Fake palm trees and string lights are spread throughout the room, and bananas are scattered on every surface: window sills, chairs and the pool table. “They’re for later when everyone is drunk and needs food,” Jack Jettison says with a laugh.
This is no ordinary show for Jettison, 26, or Songbat Blvd the Chicago-based punk-rock band he fronts. Instead of performing a scheduled set, the band is doing an impromptu show to celebrate the culmination of their first major tour across the East Coast and Canada. Surrounded by an intimate crowd of friends and fans, Jettison wears a bright red shirt and solo cup in hand to match, chatting with fans while his long black hair falls across his eyes. He’s in his element.
Once a sizable crowd has gathered, Jettison announces that the band is going to play some songs. The trio of twenty- somethings proceed to set up three chairs, two guitars, and one overturned bucket to be used as a makeshift drum. Jettison then breaks into the band’s original song “The Grinning Truth,” and it immediately captivates the entire room. Jettison doesn’t use a microphone for this performance, but his voice echoes loud and clear across the room.
While it’s his first tour wrap party, it’s just another show for someone who has been playing music since he was 19. Growing up in Michigan, Jettison learned to play guitar, and credits bands such as The Venetia Fair as his biggest influence toward his music. Jettison admired the hard work that the post-hardcore band from Boston presented, and their dedication to the punk scene.
“I learned music by covering their songs,” Jettison says. “They’re really easy and really catchy, and I wish I wrote most of them.”
Upon finding his voice in punk, Jettison moved to Chicago to attend Columbia College and, more importantly, to start a band of his own. “I just gained an affinity for it and a new lust for life. I started singing and playing guitar and three months later I moved here to start a band,” Jettison says. “It was an experience to say the least.”
Jettison’s time at Columbia College didn’t last, but the band that formed did. Over the years he met drummer Quentin Ronsick and bassist Mike Grima, who now form the rest of Songbat Blvd.
While a tour might constitute a good year for some bands, it’s only the tip of the iceberg for Songbat Blvd. Jettison and the band are already set to record a new album this summer in New York with a follow-up mini tour around the country.
One problem the band has yet to face is lack of material. Jettison has already penned many of the band’s new songs himself with the help of two obscure methods he’s adapted for writing his lyrics and melodies. The first method is a staple of rock n’ roll, and sees Jettison locking himself in his room, drinking an entire bottle of wine and playing covers that will eventually lead to him writing original songs. His second successful technique is a little more haphazard. It involves two dice, with Jettison rolling one die for a key signature and another for a key progression and just going off from there. The element of randomness appeals to him, he says.
“I actually stole it from my friend’s dad when I was 15--way before I was a musician,” Jettison says. “My friend’s dad, he was in a band back in the 70s. I remember there was one day, he was smoking a cigarette and like an old wise guy was like ‘yea so, I had this idea to make an album that was completely written by the element of random.’ So he rolled a dice and just broke it down for us and showed us how it worked and his process and he was like ‘yea, that was going to be the whole concept of the album but I just never got around to it.’ Now I utilize it and I told him last time I was in Michigan, I was like ‘Mark, I’m making your album dude.”
Jettison and his compatriots weren’t the only ones who believed in the band from the very beginning either. Heather Nickles, Songbat Blvd’s manager and a 2016 Columbia alumna, says she signed on to be the bands’ manager before she really knew them and that she was impressed with their determination to make it big.
“What I really love about them that’s different is their music. It’s almost a little theatrical instead of just being punk or just being hardcore,” Nickles says. “There’s an extra element to them that makes it really interesting.”
Jettison flips his long black hair out his face as he belts out the final lyrics, closing the band’s setlist with a final head bang. Roskina bangs away on the bucket to finish things off and the crowd erupts into applause.
Jettison says when he performs for an audience, he wants to remind them they are being provided a service, and the service is to have a good time with live music. He gets this mentality from bartending over the past couple of years to raise money to cover the band’s expenses. “We still treat it like we’re providing a service to people. Just in a way that’s more fulfilling to us, and hopefully to them, rather than filling drinks at a fundraiser or some kind of goofy little office party,” Jettison says. “We’ll be playing shows for people who went out to go see live music because they have the energy for it.”
“What’s really good about him is he addresses the audience. He’s got a good sense of humor,” Roskina says. “That’s definitely something that draws people in.” Roskina, a Columbia graduate, says he met Jack while attending Columbia. They immediately started to play music together and have been doing it for the past five years as Songbat Blvd’s original members.
“Something that really drew me to them, and Jack especially, is that they are all so driven. They really seem to know what they want and they’re doing everything they can to get there,” Nickles says. “I think that’s one of the main reasons I was so quick to get on board with their project.” Nickles describes Jack performing on stage as lightning. He runs all over the stage, interacts with the audience, and even swings a bungeed microphone, a sort of signature move that really sets him apart.
While not originally from Chicago, Jettison says the city has helped shape his music in a way that shows him what he does not want to do. Upon arriving in Chicago, he noticed a large DIY music scene and not so much the punk scene he was searching for. He found the DIY scene was mostly filled with garage rock and folk singers, something he just wasn’t a fan of. “Personally, it wasn’t what I was looking for,” Jettison says. “I guess that’s how the city influenced my music. Since I’ve lived here it just kind of fleshed out what I don’t want to do.”
Jettison says he hopes to be able to play music full time and get the most out of life by playing his heart out for every show. While he’s still only in the beginning stages of his career, Jettison is determined to live his life to the fullest. When Jettison was younger, he recalls taking road trips where he was able to talk to new people, experience different places, and find the joy of living your life spontaneously.
“When I was 17 or 18 I drove around the country by myself with the goal of figuring out how someone gets the most out of life, and that’s what I learned after a lot of really weird trial and errors,” Jettison says. “You get the most by giving everything. If you have nothing, [and] if you give it all away to people who you felt needed it, that’s how you get the most out of life.”
Noah
Sandoval
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Don't Call Me Chef
By Nick Kuhlman
While passing through Chicago’s busy West Loop, you could drive right by the tiny extension of Walnut Street that extends from the long stretch of Lake Street. The street is a pretty common sight for many Chicagoans: tenant buildings, delivery trucks, parked cars.
However, upon closer examination of the building at the end of Walnut Street--the one where a classic muscle car is usually parked—a gold plaque with the name of a brightly colored bird marks the wall. Venture inside and through the large freight elevator, you'll discover the Mid-century elegance of the Michelin Star-winning, fine-dining experience that is Oriole.
“I was sold on the elevator. It’s a lot like a speakeasy,” says owner and head chef Noah Sandoval, who drives the vintage car. “You walk in, and we have someone waiting with a welcome cocktail.”
The unconventional entrance and locale aren’t the only aspects that set Oriole apart in the exclusive world of fine-dining. As Sandoval explains, the mission is to keep the staff true to themselves. “We don’t have that many rules on how you dress, or how you interact with customers. We’ve got suits and chef coats, but we also make jokes with guests and have shots in the kitchen if they want to have shots in the kitchen,” says Sandoval with a laugh.
“I don’t think he’s very ‘chefy,’” says Cara Sandoval, Noah’s wife of eight years and general manager of the restaurant. “He doesn’t have an ego, and he hates when people call him Chef. No one is allowed to call him Chef.”
Noah spent his early restaurant years as a dishwasher, while also moonlighting as a punk-rock guitarist before moving on to attend the Culinary Institute of New Orleans. After two months, he left culinary school behind to pursue his passion first-hand.
“Out of the two months there, I realized that I didn’t want to go into the corporate world. I didn’t want to go into a hotel environment. I didn’t want to go into a chain restaurant environment. I didn’t want to be stuck with those kinds of parameters. I happened to be working at a restaurant at the time that was teaching me a ton every day.”
Instead of mastering his culinary skill in the classroom, Sandoval took his talents back home to Virginia where he began working with decorated chef David Shannon. He credits Shannon as his inspiration for culinary artistry and his relaxed attitude toward the business.
“His talents are amazing. He’s one of the smartest, most creative people I know—in and out of the kitchen,” Sandoval says of David. “But what really inspired me to do this whole thing was how cool he was. He doesn’t yell at anyone. He works with you, jokes with you, and becomes your friend. I learned how to make that work from him, and I still push myself as hard as I can to make sure that I am providing a good experience for all the employees.”
Sandoval soon discovered the culinary delights and culture of Chicago. “I loved it immediately. It was a big city, but not too cramped. Super blue-collar, and I could tell that everybody was pretty laid back.” After an impromptu vacation to Austin, Texas, to visit a high school crush, his now wife Cara, he had a memorable experience at Chicago’s famed Blackbird restaurant. It was there that he experienced his first tasting menu, which helped him decide to make the Windy City his home.
In 2012, Noah and Cara became partners in the unveiling of Senza, a fine-dining restaurant in the Lakeview neighborhood with a gluten-free menu. During his four years as head chef, Senza was awarded one Michelin Star two years in a row. It eventually became clear to Sandoval that it was time for him to move on to something more personal. “We opened and closed Senza. We were there day one and the last day, so it ran its course. We didn’t really have ties to it anymore,” says Noah.
In 2016, Noah established a restaurant of his own, and with the help of his wife and a handful of Senza regulars, who would later become investors, Oriole was born. “I got my hands dirty with a little bit of helping build the restaurant and organizing stuff. Cara and I essentially sourced everything. We designed the banquets and tables, ordered the chairs, decided where the plumbing was going to go and how the kitchen was going to be set up.”
Noah confesses to being confident in getting his first Michelin Star. “We got one at Senza, so I figured it was only a matter of time before they started trying to find out what Oriole was about,” Noah says about Michelin. Although, Oriole’s second star came as almost a complete surprise.
“It was me, one of my partners and my wife, and we came to the restaurant early. I couldn’t sit still. I was just pacing. I had the phone in the middle of the room, and they called and told me. I was just like, all right, game on. They think we’re doing something right, so now we do it even more right, even better.”
Following their two-star Michelin recognition in their first year of business, and being named Best New Restaurant, in Chicago magazine, Noah and his team forged ahead into the competitive fine-dining environment of Chicago.
“It’s tough if you try to compete,” says Sandoval. “If you start thinking about what the next guy is doing, then you’re trying too hard. And when you try too hard you fail.”
Since its inception, Noah has filled his kitchen with award winners, who Cara refers to as “lifers” in the industry. Names like Genie Kwon, a renowned pastry chef named in Esquire’s 2017 Best New Restaurant issue, and nationally recognized chef de cuisine Tim Flores have been added to Oriole’s line-up. Rather than focus on the competition, Noah chooses to equip his kitchen with positive vibes, talent--and oftentimes the music of classic punk rockers The Clash.
“Everyone who works here has that passion,” says Cara. “We’re all perfectionists, and we never have a day where we’re just like, let’s call this one in. We just don’t have that ability.”
Oriole currently sports a 15-course menu, compared to the standard 18 that often come with a tasting menu. Noah says his menu is inspired by flavors and techniques that he has encountered through travel and working alongside chefs from all over the world.
“We’re exploring as many different techniques as we can. I think that I’ve been affected by different types of cuisine. Southern cuisine has a heavy influence on me. Even if I’m putting together an Asian course, I still take philosophies from the South. I’ve worked for a lot of different chefs who have worked in Asia or are Asian, and I’ve worked with the chefs that are Southern and have worked all over the South.”
On a recent Thursday, as the clock ticks closer to doors-open, Sandoval is faced with a question he recalls being asked thousands of times: Will there be a third Michelin Star, which could cement Oriole as one of the greatest restaurants not only in Chicago, but in the world? Sandoval only gives a light laugh and explains that the goal is to focus on the day-to-day success in the kitchen, and to simply keep everyone happy.
“There’s always the idea of getting three stars. I’m not sure if we’re even set up for it, but we’re just going to do the best we possibly can, and if that happens, it happens. If we’re able to get three stars in this space with this amount of staff, then we will. I’m confident.”