Trotter, Charlie

The chef and restaurateur Charlie Trotter has been quoted as saying, “If it isn’t broken, then break it.” Trotter made his reputation on a cuisine in which, according to Molly O’Neill (The New York Times), “the complexity of his recipes pushes the outer limits of culinary sanity.” The cuisine, however, has won Trotter international acclaim and almost every major culinary award for his namesake restaurant, his books, and his television series.

Trotter was born in 1959 and was reared in the northern Chicago suburb of Wilmette. His family was not food oriented, and Trotter never had ambitions of becoming a chef. However, on his prom night in 1976, while dining at The Bakery restaurant in Chicago, Trotter had an epiphany. Seeing the dramatic persona of the impeccably toqued chef Louis Szathmary, Trotter declared that one day he, too, would be a chef.