Checking In On Chicago's Mk The Restaurant

Michael Kornick's mk The Restaurant has been a Chicago fine-dining staple for years, and as the restaurant celebrates its 15th anniversary, it is still going strong. We spoke with Erick Williams, mk's executive chef, who believes his long history with the restaurant has helped him to keep the consistency that diners expect from mk while also moving it forward. "I've worked with the restaurant the entire time it's been open," he says. "So I've seen every change, every tweak, and I've used all of those adjustments and tweaks to really build my own repetoire and really, in my opinion, take the restaurant into its next phase that we're going into in this 15th year."

Williams believes that one of the restaurant's strengths is that it has been a locavore advocate long before it was fashionable. "We use as much as we possibly can that's local and sesonal when it's available to us," he says. "The farmers are very accessible; they're very happy to grow things that we want them to grow year in year out... Chicago gets really excited about local and seasonal ingredients because we don't get as much access."

For more from Williams, watch the video above and head to mk The Restaurant when in Chicago!