Scenes from Graham Elliot's cookbook, "Cooking Like a Master Chef," which was released on Oct. 27. [Graham Elliot]
WEST LOOP — First cookbook — check. Popular TV show — check. Popular West Loop restaurant — check. Three Michelin stars? That's next on chef Graham Elliot's list.
The newly minted cookbook author and owner of Graham Elliot Bistro, known to hordes of TV-watching fans as a judge on Fox's "MasterChef" and "MasterChef Junior," said Monday he planned to get back into the fine-dining game "with the idea of getting our three Michelin stars."
He said the next restaurant he opens will be "really small, have a great story, be in a great location and be super different" — and it could come sooner rather than later.
"I think this next year will be a big year of decisions and transitions," he said.
Elliot said the new restaurant won't be just another impersonal celebrity chef project.
"It's finding that balance and making sure I can be there almost every night," he said. "I don't know if that means the TV thing goes away, but obviously the restaurant would be in Chicago and we'd absolutely make sure it's something we can do as perfectly as we can."
Elliot is no stranger to high-end, high-stakes dining. The Charlie Trotter protege made a name for himself at Avenues in the Peninsula Hotel before opening his first namesake restaurant, Graham Elliot, in River North in 2008, where servers in jeans and T-shirts brought out dishes like "foie-lipops," foie gras discs coated in Pop Rocks.
The restaurant earned two Michelin stars in the 2013 restaurant guide.
But by late 2013 he announced he would close Graham Elliot after the year's end and he'd already shuttered his River North sandwich shop Grahamwich. Last year, he closed his short-lived Connecticut restaurant, Primary Food & Drink, leaving only his bistro at 841 W. Randolph St.
"There's a difference between making food and selling food, and when you're 30 and opening a place, a lot of times you realize that math doesn't work," he said.
Now 38, with 21 years of cooking under his belt, Elliot said he takes a different, "not as ego-driven" view, thanks to parenthood (three boys) and a dramatic change in his lifestyle. After gastric sleeve surgery in 2013, he's 150 pounds trimmer, he runs regularly and sticks to a healthy diet.
Except for the first three months out of the year when he's in Los Angeles filming "MasterChef," he can for the most part be found in the kitchen at Graham Elliot Bistro — which, he said, often catches people off guard.
"What's funny is my kids go to school here, I own a house and live here and I own one restaurant and it's here, and people think I'm not part of Chicago anymore, which is the furthest thing from the truth," he said.
His debut cookbook, "Cooking Like a Master Chef: 100 Recipes to Make the Everyday Extraordinary," was released last week.
Co-written by prolific cookbook author Mary Goodbody, it has been on his bucket list for some time now.
"It's a first introduction to who I am and what I cook," Elliot said. "I'd say 90 percent of it is everyday dishes, but elevated."
He acknowledged that coming up with 100 recipes was "really, really difficult," he said, but as chefs tend to do, he didn't have to look far for inspiration.
The beef stroganoff, for instance, is based on is mom's, but instead of ground beef and cream of mushroom soup, "it's mushroom puree and spaetzle and an 8-hour short rib," he said.
While Elliot will be on the road in the coming weeks to promote the book, his schedule is not as jam-packed and far-flung as it could be.
He did events last week at Kendall College, DePaul University and Anderson's Bookstore. He is in Arizona this weekend and then he'll be back, with at least three signings in Chicago still being finalized.
On Nov. 22, he will be at Horse Thief Hollow in Beverly, close to his Morgan Park home. The three-course dinner sold out in about three hours.
"I've tried to keep it as local as possible," said Elliot, who will cook three recipes from the book — his riff on Caesar salad, that stroganoff and s'mores.
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