Chef Kevin Hickey on The Duck Inn, Bridgeport Roots & Chicago’s Culinary Renaissance

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 (Upbeat Music)

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Sylvia
 Today on Supper with Sylvia, I'm thrilled to welcome a true hometown hero, Chef Kevin Hickey. He's the mastermind behind The Duck Inn in Bridgeport, which just happens to be in the neighborhood he grew up in. I love this part. His restaurant is literally down the street from his childhood home. Kevin spent years cooking at the Four Seasons and has picked up plenty of awards along the way. But what's really cool is how he's brought all of this experience back to his roots. The Duck Inn isn't just an incredible place for food, it's become a real neighborhood spot. If you haven't been, you've got to check it out. The rotisserie duck is legendary. The pizza nights, super fun. Hawaiian nights are such a kick with a roast pig. And don't even get me started on that bat patio. It is one of the best spots in the city to hang out with one of their creative cocktails and some great food. I can't wait to dive into Kevin's story, his food, and what it means to come home and build something special.

[01:01:15:02 - 01:01:17:12]
Sylvia
 Kevin Hickey, it's so great to see you, my friend.

[01:01:18:13 - 01:01:19:02]
Kevin
 Great to be here.

[01:01:19:02 - 01:01:21:02]
Sylvia
 Just to give a little history, you know.

[01:01:22:07 - 01:01:29:23]
Sylvia
 So Kevin came from fine dining. I mean, you worked for the Four Seasons. That's where we first officially met for decades.

[01:01:31:13 - 01:02:11:04]
Sylvia
 And I remember when you left the Four Seasons and people were wondering, well, what comes next? And eventually The Duck Inn opens. That was 2014, which is the 10 year anniversary now. And I remember going out there for the first time and thinking to myself, wow, I've never been to this part of Chicago before. So it's a Bridgeport, which is your home. And I'd never been to Bridgeport before, maybe to shoot news stories, but never to go actually sit down and eat at a restaurant. So I kind of want to paint the picture for people because you're in this old historic, what was I guess a neighborhood bar that literally is a block from your old home, right?

[01:02:11:04 - 01:02:16:08]
Kevin
 Yeah, it's a neighborhood tavern that was owned by one family for three generations,

[01:02:17:21 - 01:02:22:07]
Kevin
 opened up early 20th century pre-prohibition.

[01:02:23:10 - 01:02:28:04]
Kevin
 And I grew up with it. It was the corner tavern.

[01:02:29:12 - 01:02:31:17]
Kevin
 I grew up with the family. We,

[01:02:32:17 - 01:02:38:02]
Kevin
 the owner of the bar was our precinct captain and our little league.

[01:02:39:04 - 01:02:40:16]
Kevin
 He ran our whole little league.

[01:02:41:22 - 01:03:01:05]
Kevin
 My dad hung out there with all of his friends. They had bowling teams at the local bowling alley. We still have the bowling trophies from those teams in the bar that we found down in the basement. So it was the kind of neighborhood tavern that there are very few of left in Chicago.

[01:03:02:15 - 01:03:17:11]
Kevin
 And it just seemed like a great spot to open a place and it was affordable and I could do a lot of it on my own. And all the stars aligned on that.

[01:03:17:11 - 01:03:34:06]
Sylvia
 Yeah, I have to say though, were you a little nervous about this because you truly are in an area that isn't considered like a restaurant scene. Yeah, it's a neighborhood, but unless you're in that neighborhood, are you gonna go out there? So that had to be a little nerve wracking. What finally made you decide I want to do it?

[01:03:34:06 - 01:04:18:00]
Kevin
 Well, it was desperation, to be honest with you. I really, really wanted to open a restaurant. I really wanted to do my own thing. It was like, it's do or die, now's the time. I really wanted to do it downtown. It was not the vision that I would be some pioneer in the neighborhood I grew up on. It just all kind of fell together that I couldn't make it work downtown. I couldn't get people to back me. I was an unproven restaurant entity. I was a successful chef or hotel chef, that kind of thing, but not in the restaurant world. So after losing amazing locations that are now iconic restaurants,

[01:04:19:07 - 01:04:38:17]
Kevin
 I finally just decided to buy that because then I could own the building and own the real estate and it was reasonably priced and the bones of the place were good. So I knew that it wouldn't cost a million dollars to turn it into the kind of restaurant I wanted to turn it into. So it really was chance more than design.

[01:04:38:17 - 01:04:51:23]
Sylvia
 But what I love about it is I love the history. I love the connection. I mean, you're a Bridgeport guy, you're a Southsider. Like I said, you grew up down the street and the restaurant has this amazing history. You're talking about prohibition.

[01:04:53:06 - 01:05:17:22]
Sylvia
 And so you opened The Duck Inn and the first year, wow, you've got all these accolades. It was crazy and people were saying, have you been to Bridgeport to try The Duck Inn? But then as time goes on, it really kind of becomes that neighborhood place as well that you really wanted it to be. Tell me some of the stories about the people who have come back that have kind of that long-term attachment to you and your family.

[01:05:19:11 - 01:05:59:22]
Kevin
 Oh, well, I think our family's been in this neighborhood for six generations or so. So there's so much connection, so much history. There's history between the ownership of the building and our family going back to a hundred years, selling each other land and so forth. And it's almost a nightly thing when I'm there that somebody comes up and they grew up in the neighborhood or their parents grew up in the neighborhood or something. It does make it a special place. And we've seen the neighborhood evolve too, which has really driven our business.

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Kevin
 The first few years that we were open,

[01:06:07:04 - 01:06:21:12]
Kevin
 the majority of our clientele was not coming from the neighborhood. They were coming from all parts of the city and I had built a reputation in the city. So that was helpful in drawing people down to the area.

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Kevin
 And again, the evolution of technology and ride share and GPS and all these things just made it so,

[01:06:32:22 - 01:06:34:17]
Kevin
 location has changed.

[01:06:36:02 - 01:06:52:00]
Kevin
 With restaurants, it used to be your location was everything. And I think your location is still important in many ways, but the technology has allowed you to open in places that you wouldn't have in the past because you're still accessible.

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Kevin
 But what we've seen in the evolution of the neighborhood is we've seen the property values increase. We've seen new homes being built and particularly right around us. So that has driven our neighborhood capture by quite a bit. So we capture a lot more of Bridgeport, Pilsen,

[01:07:18:19 - 01:08:00:16]
Kevin
 maybe even a little bit of McKinley Park, more so than ever before. And Hyde Park. Hyde Park has always been from day one, has been a great draw for us. We get a lot of clientele from Hyde Park, particularly from the university, from the faculty and so forth. And Indiana, we get a lot of people. Yeah, we get a lot of people from right over the border because you can get to Bridgeport pretty quick from Munster and Hammond and Valparaiso and so forth. And we have free parking, you know, and they can have a city, a Chicago city experience

[01:08:01:19 - 01:08:10:04]
Kevin
 with a 45 minute drive and accessible parking, you know, and then maybe even a quicker drive home.

[01:08:10:04 - 01:08:54:18]
Sylvia
 You have so much to do with that. You know, I think opening the place where you did has helped to support other places and encourage them to open in that area as well. But I love what you offer, your menu. It's so interesting. I have to tell everybody. My first two, I had two first food experiences at The Duck Innn, okay? I've had duck before, but I want to say your duck is some of the best I've ever had, but cheese curds. I never had cheese curds till I came to your place. And I was like, wow, that's what these Wisconsinites are so crazy about cheese curds. These are delicious. So cheese curds was my first duck in food experience. And my other one was Mallort, thanks to your, to Brandon.

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Kevin
 That's not exactly a food, exactly a food experience. I don't know what kind of experience that is.

[01:08:59:13 - 01:09:18:20]
Sylvia
 It's a Chicago experience, truly. Yeah, you guys are so Chicago, but I read somewhere that people would come in who were, you know, you had grown up with that people would say to you, oh, I used to babysit you or that room in your restaurant. That's where, that was my bedroom. Tell me about that, how wild.

[01:09:19:20 - 01:10:00:22]
Kevin
 Yeah, well, there was a large family, the family that owned the bar and it was their home, you know, so if you know The Duck Inn, you know, the bar area. And then as you walk through the bar and there's a set of French doors that are always open. But if you walk through those doors into the dining room, that didn't exist for the vast majority of the bar's life. That was actually the Gimbara family home. So the, our dining room and our kitchen and everything, that was all their, their house. And they had a side entrance on Lumen Street that they covered up a long time ago.

[01:10:02:18 - 01:10:29:12]
Kevin
 Yeah, and I think they probably had three bedrooms, four bedrooms in their living and dining in the kitchen. And yeah, the kids that grew up there and come back to the restaurant many times to, for special occasions and so forth. And yeah, we particularly, we had one of the kids have her and her husband's 50th wedding anniversary

[01:10:30:12 - 01:10:37:02]
Kevin
 in the dining room. Like, so for her, it was she sitting in her living room that she grew up in. Yeah, it was really great.

[01:10:38:23 - 01:10:57:00]
Kevin
 So that's, that's fun. It's cool. And then of course, you know, I've got, the running joke at The Duck Inn is that somebody's my cousin and, you know, in various times it's, it's, it's true. Once a week, somebody's their cousin, their chest cousin's here. So, you know.

[01:10:57:00 - 01:11:08:21]
Sylvia
 That's so cool though. And you must be, you must be so proud. I mean, I don't know if initially that was your goal. I mean, there's history there, you know, this is your neighborhood, but to see what you've done, how you're bringing people to Bridgeport,

[01:11:09:22 - 01:11:12:21]
Sylvia
 including we have talked about restoring Ramova theater.

[01:11:14:04 - 01:11:25:02]
Sylvia
 Tell me about how that whole process got about. Cause Ramova theater and they had a grill there. And I think you, that was a place used to frequent. It brings back childhood memories. Tell me about that.

[01:11:25:02 - 01:11:41:03]
Kevin
 No, well, Ramova has a lot of history. First and foremost, it was a movie theater that opened in 1929. It was the sister property to the music box up on Southport in Addison. Same architect, they both opened the same year.

[01:11:42:07 - 01:11:51:12]
Kevin
 And so it was a staple in the neighborhood. Now the Ramova is not small. It's a very large, grand movie theater.

[01:11:52:13 - 01:12:04:06]
Kevin
 But by the time, my generation, by the time we were growing up and growing the movies, it was what they called like a last run neighborhood theater. So this is of course the days before

[01:12:06:19 - 01:12:29:06]
Kevin
 DHS or DVDs or straining or anything like that. So when the big movies were in the big movie theaters downtown and so forth, after they'd been there for a few weeks or months and it was time for them to be replaced by new movies, they would go to the neighborhood theaters and we would pay 50 cents or a dollar to go see a movie at the Ramova.

[01:12:30:22 - 01:12:43:02]
Kevin
 So that was a lot of my childhood memories. And then also right next to the theater was the Ramova Grill. And it was a really classic greasy spoon.

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Kevin
 Guys behind the counter, they would just dish up bowls of chili and cheeseburgers and breakfast all day and so forth. And it was tiny little spot with maybe, I don't know, I think in three or four booths and about 12 stools at the most.

[01:13:03:06 - 01:13:47:17]
Kevin
 So it was tiny. It was right next to the, not right next to the theater, but probably 150 feet from the theater entrance. And so it's not a lot of time there. You go there before or after a movie and then upstairs about the Ramova Grill was a space that was at various times, either a boxing ring or a karate dojo. So I spent a lot of my youth up there in my karate classes. So, you know, between the movies and the grill and the karate, I was in that building for the majority of my childhood growing up in Bridgeport. So it's, and I'm not the only one who has all of those experiences

[01:13:48:19 - 01:14:06:21]
Kevin
 with the building and so forth. So it was literally right after The Duck Inn open, probably within a couple of months, a guy from the city whose brother I'd gone to high school with was in The Duck Inn and he's like, oh, you guys should take over the Ramova.

[01:14:07:22 - 01:14:32:10]
Kevin
 I hadn't given it a whole lot of thought. I hadn't been living back in Bridgeport for terribly long. The Ramova had been closed and abandoned for since 1986 and the Ramova Grill closed. And I think, I think 2012. So that was a long run. They were open for a very, very long time, 1929 to 2012.

[01:14:34:12 - 01:15:02:16]
Kevin
 So I remember going and looking at it with the partners that I had at the time and being just astonished at the amount of damage that had happened to it over the last 20, 30 years, you know, the holes in the road from the city had taken it over and kind of cleaned it up a bit and sealed it up, but it was rough. You know, there were trees growing in the corners and almost like a stream running through the middle of the building

[01:15:03:23 - 01:15:15:05]
Kevin
 and the layers and layers of dirt and debris and so forth. And we looked at it and just thought, "Oh man, the only way we're gonna do this if we got some celebrity partner to put in, you know,

[01:15:16:06 - 01:15:34:10]
Kevin
 millions of dollars or something." And then promptly kind of forgot about it for the next several, several years. And then a friend approached me and said they had a friend who was interested in opening a live,

[01:15:35:10 - 01:16:16:12]
Kevin
 you know, a performance venue with a brewery and restaurant and all that kind of stuff. Do I know of anything? I said, "Well, there's the Romova." They could take a look at that. And so this gentleman, Tyler Nevis, he came back to Chicago from Chicago area and his wife was living in Brooklyn, working for a company there. And they came to look at it and they met with the alderman. And long story short, they shepherded it through a massive, just a massive undertaking project that eventually through help with the city and TIFF and local investors and some celebrity partners

[01:16:18:16 - 01:16:21:23]
Kevin
 made it through COVID, which was miraculous.

[01:16:23:03 - 01:16:27:22]
Kevin
 And we opened, it's been a year and a few months.

[01:16:28:23 - 01:16:33:16]
Kevin
 We opened like right at the end of 2023.

[01:16:33:16 - 01:16:38:22]
Sylvia
 I love that. And you're doing the grill and you've got some fun foods on the menu.

[01:16:38:22 - 01:16:55:07]
Kevin
 Yeah, we're overseeing the food and beverage. That's a big undertaking there. There's multiple bars and it's a performance venue that holds upwards of 1800 people. So there's bars in there. And then we have the restaurant and there's a brewery

[01:16:56:16 - 01:17:00:03]
Kevin
 and some catered events and so forth. So yeah, a lot going on.

[01:17:01:08 - 01:17:02:19]
Sylvia
 And we'll be right back.

[01:17:05:23 - 01:17:58:06]
Sylvia
 Hey foodie friends. I wanted to let you know I was at the Grant Park Music Festival on Wednesday night. It's one of my favorite summer time shy activities to do sitting outside on a beautiful summer night with the city lights shining from the high rise buildings and listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I was working late that night. So I didn't have time to put together my own charcuterie board. And I remembered, oh yeah, I was at an event and Marianos puts these boards together. So I called ahead, ordered my special board. It had all the cheeses, the nuts, the meats and the jams. And I have to tell you the presentation was stunning. Go to my supper with Sylvia Instagram page to see the pictures. Moving forward, this is going to be my go-to. So this is something I wanted to share with you that you can also take advantage of. And thanks again to Marianos for being my official sponsor for the Supper with Sylvia podcast.

[01:18:01:09 - 01:18:07:10]
Sylvia
 I know you mentioned some celebrities. You do have some big names. I think Jennifer Hudson has been a contributor, right?

[01:18:07:10 - 01:18:10:05]
Kevin
 Yeah, Jennifer Hudson's involved. Chance the Rapper,

[01:18:11:14 - 01:18:30:19]
Kevin
 the late Quincy Jones and now his family. So yeah, there's a lot of involvement, a lot of community involvement. All three of those people are Chicago natives, Quincy left Chicago at a young age, probably 12 or so. But Jennifer and Chance are Southside ride or die.

[01:18:30:19 - 01:19:05:14]
Sylvia
 Wow, that's so great. When I think of the Southside, I think of the White Sox. I think of the Daily Family. Sure. And The Duck Inn is now the thing that comes to mind. Those are the really, for me, Southsiders. And wow, the fact that you get to kind of help to and I know you're modest about this and you have a lot of people who are helping as well, but the fact that you get to help rebuild this neighborhood that you grew up in and it's just amazing. That must make you feel so good inside.

[01:19:06:16 - 01:19:07:12]
Sylvia
 Sure, yeah.

[01:19:07:12 - 01:20:26:03]
Kevin
 I mean, I do feel strong connections in the neighborhood. My family's been here, I don't know, I think since the 19th century, late 19th century and owned businesses and been a real strong part of the community for well over a hundred years. So it does feel, it just felt, I don't know, what's the word, fate or destiny here. Yeah, I guess to a certain extent, sure. Yeah, and the neighborhood was different. And when I came back in particularly our little area over here on the river was, it wasn't great. There was some gang activity and some stuff going on around here that we didn't like. And it took us a few years to turn that around with the help from law enforcement and our elected officials down here. And we got it going. And then I think a big catalyst for this part of Bridgeport was not just the Wien, but the boathouse, the riverfront park that the city put in right down the street from The Duck Inn. So we have a beautiful genie gang designed park right there

[01:20:27:03 - 01:20:37:11]
Kevin
 that's a kind of a headquarters for crewing. So we've got several schools that crew, UIC, University of Chicago, St. Ignatius,

[01:20:39:10 - 01:21:34:12]
Kevin
 also an inner city nonprofit that teaches kids about crewing and a couple of different clubs, like the Recovery on Water and I think the Lincoln Park Rowing Club works with us too. They store their boats there and they're doing classes, they're doing regattas and all kinds of stuff all summer long. So it's nice. And then it's a beautiful view of the river and it's kind of a historical branch of the river where we're at right here on this corner. It's where the stockyards actually dug out an extension of the river so they could bring cattle down to the stockyards and then take a butch meat out of the stockyards. Yeah, it's a little fork, a little artificially dug fork in the river,

[01:21:35:17 - 01:21:37:11]
Kevin
 affectionately known as Bubbly Creek.

[01:21:38:12 - 01:21:39:14]
Sylvia
 Bubbly Creek, that sounds scary.

[01:21:39:14 - 01:21:46:08]
Kevin
 It's very, it should be scary. It's in Upton Sinclair's book, "The General"

[01:21:47:14 - 01:22:11:17]
Kevin
 where he talks about the horrible stockyards and meatpacking and slaughterhouses of Chicago. That all took place right around the corner. It's called Bubbly Creek because they threw so much debris into the river back then because there weren't regulations and so forth. And the river doesn't naturally flow right there. So everything kind of stagnant.

[01:22:12:17 - 01:22:26:10]
Kevin
 And the legend was that you could walk across the river back in the day and it was bubbling because of all the gases being released from the carcasses that they're throwing in the river.

[01:22:26:10 - 01:22:32:16]
Sylvia
 Chicago's river has a horrible reputation. It has improved tremendously, right? It has, it has.

[01:22:32:16 - 01:22:39:11]
Kevin
 No, no, no, no, no, I mean, they're out there rolling on it every day. Yeah, and that boathouse-- It's not toxic or anything like that.

[01:22:39:11 - 01:22:42:00]
Sylvia
 And that boathouse you mentioned is beautiful. I love Jeannie Gang.

[01:22:42:00 - 01:22:43:17]
Kevin
 No, it's gorgeous. She did a beautiful job.

[01:22:43:17 - 01:23:21:03]
Sylvia
 She's a female architect and has also the architect behind one of my favorite new high rises in Chicago and that's the St. Regis Tower. It's just stunning. The boathouse by you is so pretty, which brings me to this. And I know you know what I'm gonna talk about. I talk about it every year when I see you. And that is one of my favorite summer memories is hopping on an electric boat in downtown, on the river walk in downtown Chicago, taking that boat to the south branch of the Chicago River, passing Chinatown, and then all of a sudden it pulls up right by that boathouse.

[01:23:22:03 - 01:23:43:23]
Sylvia
 And we were served wine and charcuterie and then we get off the boat and we walk over to the duck-in and have this amazing dinner in your patio. And you've done a lot of really fun events that have brought people there. That's just one of them, but you have like Hawaiian night, you've got pizza night, you've got the pig roast.

[01:23:43:23 - 01:24:03:18]
Kevin
 I mean, that's all part of it, right? Yeah, well, we've always wanted to have fun with different things. In the backyard, there's so many options to do fun and interesting things. I always wanted to do pig roast back there. So we do tropical pig roast all summer long.

[01:24:05:00 - 01:24:07:09]
Kevin
 I love pizza, I'm obsessed with pizza.

[01:24:09:16 - 01:24:56:01]
Kevin
 Early on our first year, this fantastic company called Chicago Brick Oven Pizza, they are just actually just called Chicago Brick Oven. And they gave us a pizza oven 11 years ago. And it has sat outside on our patio in the winter and summer and it's been snowed on and it's gone through snowmageddon and polar vortexes and 110 degree heat. And it's as good as the day we got it over 10 years ago. So as soon as the weather turns, we start doing pizza nights on Wednesdays. And that's been a solid 10 years, really, really popular. We all really enjoy doing it. And yeah, and then the river cruises,

[01:24:57:04 - 01:26:17:14]
Kevin
 we always wanted, we're right on the river. We always thought it'd be so fun to do something like that. And it's very challenging to do the river cruises because the boat situation is tough. There's a tonic, beautiful bridge, not far from us, that is a train bridge. And I don't wanna embarrass myself by calling it the wrong thing. It's not a suspension bridge, but it's one of those bridges that goes up and down because of how low it is, because it's street level, because of course it's taking trains, takes commuter train across it. And that gets so, it's so low to the river that it has to be raised for boats to go under it. So that's been one of the challenges for us doing our river cruises. We've done them several times for a few years and stuff, but it's always tough to find the right boats. Those little electric boats can go right under them. But the problem is the boats only carry 10 to 12 people. So you wanna do a really nice event and have a bunch of people come down the river. And as you said, drink champagne and eat charcuterie and get off the boat and we meet you at the boat with cocktails and then we come down and have a lovely dinner and get back on the boats and have cognac and cigars and brandy and the courts and dessert.

[01:26:19:07 - 01:27:01:15]
Kevin
 To do that with the electric boats, we had to get five boats and we had to get five captains to drive the boats. And it was logistically very challenging. Then we got a bigger boat. And then the challenge with the bigger boat was now we have to wait for the train and the bridge to be raised each time, twice. You have to, and that can delay the whole experience by 30 minutes to an hour and those boats are hourly. So a lot of logistical stuff that's not sexy or fun or interesting to hear about, but it makes it challenging for us to do it. We really want to do it because it's so fun. Everybody loves it and it's such a cool event, but we'll figure it out.

[01:27:01:15 - 01:27:11:07]
Sylvia
 Yeah, I'm always surprised when I've told people that I've done this, they're shocked that I can take a boat from the river walk all the way to you. They're like, how can you possibly do that?

[01:27:11:07 - 01:27:12:00]
Kevin
 Oh yeah.

[01:27:12:00 - 01:27:15:15]
Sylvia
 Yeah, a lot of people in Chicago don't know that that's even a possibility.

[01:27:15:15 - 01:27:56:05]
Kevin
 Yeah, the river taxis come all the way down to Chinatown, to Pingtong Park. So that's super easy. And then the electric ones, obviously, you can take as far as you want. It takes a good, in the electric boat, it takes a good 50 minutes to get from like, say, city wiry to duck in. So it takes a minute, those don't go very fast. But the dream was always the plan, the city plan. And I think it's an eventual fulfillment of the plan is that you should be able to walk from downtown to the Eleanor Boathouse and Bridgeport along the river walk. But it'll get there.

[01:27:56:05 - 01:28:12:16]
Sylvia
 Yeah, it's taking time. I was gonna say, if it's 50 minutes, five, zero, it is the most pleasant 50 minutes of your life. Oh, it's so serene and it's early evening, you head out there, there's nothing like it, I have to say. So what have you got going on? What's the future hold for you?

[01:28:13:17 - 01:28:21:11]
Kevin
 Oh, all kinds of projects that hopefully will take roots. We'd love to do another restaurant, so much to duck in in a different neighborhood.

[01:28:23:00 - 01:28:33:22]
Kevin
 People have been begging us for 10 years to open something, you know, put a duck in on the north side. So we'd love to do that someday.

[01:28:35:20 - 01:28:53:09]
Kevin
 Our hot dog concept has had a lot of success over the years in different incarnations at Time Out Market and Revival Food Hall. So we would love to open a brick and mortar freestanding version of our Duck and Dogs Burgers and Beefs.

[01:28:53:09 - 01:28:53:20]
Sylvia
 Awesome.

[01:28:53:20 - 01:29:01:20]
Kevin
 Yeah, so those projects are working and trying to find locations and investors and all that kind of stuff.

[01:29:01:20 - 01:29:07:03]
Sylvia
 Well, let me stop you here, because those Duck and Dogs, wow, they are so good.

[01:29:08:07 - 01:29:32:21]
Sylvia
 And you came up with that concept. It's so funny, because whenever I go to The Duck Inn, I mean, the menu is just so varied and there's so many wonderful things, but I always say, no matter what I order that night, I have to absolutely have one of the hot dogs and I force whomever is with me to split it, because it's so, right? It's kind of, it's fun to be known for something like that. What makes those hot dogs so stinkin' good, Kevin?

[01:29:34:13 - 01:29:38:19]
Kevin
 I don't know, an old world recipe, duck fat, all kinds of--

[01:29:38:19 - 01:29:40:22]
Sylvia
 Who knew duck fat could do that to a hot dog?

[01:29:40:22 - 01:29:48:09]
Kevin
 Well, magic dust. Yeah, I thought it would. I mean, duck fat kind of makes everything better, so I thought, why wouldn't it make a hot dog better?

[01:29:49:15 - 01:30:09:05]
Kevin
 I had been doing the hot dog at the Four Seasons and thought I should take that with me and what could I do to make it different? And obviously I'm opening The Duck Inn, so I'll add some duck fat. And so with a wonderful manufacturing partner, Mikowski Sausage, down here in Birchport, we were able to realize that dream.

[01:30:09:05 - 01:30:28:14]
Sylvia
 That's awesome. Well, let's talk about, I always like to ask people, what is your favorite go-to restaurant in Chicago? Because I know how a lot of you chefs are as well. You have kind of your standard, that's kind of your comfort, and it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but what would you say your go-to spot is?

[01:30:28:14 - 01:30:39:18]
Kevin
 That's a tough one. We eat in Chinatown a lot, so we're big fans of Ming Hen. We eat in Pilsen a lot, so Five Revenue Toast is a regular spot for us.

[01:30:42:09 - 01:30:42:20]
Kevin
 Or else.

[01:30:44:04 - 01:30:46:00]
Kevin
 Big standard, Mira,

[01:30:47:04 - 01:30:51:03]
Kevin
 which is a new place doing kind of a Mexican-Indian hybrid.

[01:30:52:18 - 01:30:55:01]
Sylvia
 That place is getting rave reviews, I have not been yet.

[01:30:55:01 - 01:31:00:23]
Kevin
 Oh, it's excellent. It's really excellent. Some of the most exciting flavors I've had in Chicago in years.

[01:31:00:23 - 01:31:03:05]
Sylvia
 Mexican and Indian, so interesting.

[01:31:03:05 - 01:31:14:09]
Kevin
 Yeah, you would, I don't know for most people there probably wouldn't be an automatic connection, but there's so much synergy between those cuisines that it's pretty exciting.

[01:31:14:09 - 01:31:29:14]
Sylvia
 Well, that's cool. Okay, so I read in an interview that you did, what, Think Eater a year after the restaurant had opened, and they asked you, where would you like to see yourself in 10 years? Or where do you see yourself in 10 years?

[01:31:29:14 - 01:31:35:03]
Kevin
 Oh, I think realizing those dreams of a couple more restaurants,

[01:31:37:10 - 01:31:38:10]
Kevin
 I don't know. I mean,

[01:31:39:11 - 01:31:40:07]
Kevin
 that's a tough one.

[01:31:40:07 - 01:31:42:05]
 (Upbeat Music)

[01:31:43:12 - 01:31:47:10]
Kevin
 In some ways, you know, continuing to do what I'm doing, but in other ways,

[01:31:48:17 - 01:31:51:08]
Kevin
 expanding it to reach more people, I guess.

[01:31:51:08 - 01:32:13:14]
Sylvia
 Yeah, well, I hope that that certainly happens. And then I look forward to coming back out and enjoying that patio this summer and seeing you out and about. You're so involved with giving back to the city. And so thank you for all the philanthropy you do and how you really represent your town, Chicago, and Bridgeport in the best way possible. Kevin Hickey, my friend, so good to talk to you.

[01:32:13:14 - 01:32:15:11]
Kevin
 Great to talk to you. Thank you so much, Sylvia.

[01:32:15:11 - 01:32:16:06]
Sylvia
 Yeah, I hope to see you soon.

[01:32:17:14 - 01:32:26:13]
Sylvia
 This podcast is produced by Jane Stephens, audio engineering and original music by Donnie Cutting, social media and promotions, Magali Blasdell.