Going back to the table with former
Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel

By Valerie Hardy

Photography by Victor Hilitski

For over three decades, Phil Vettel shaped Chicagoland’s dining scene. An acclaimed restaurant critic for the Chicago Tribune, Vettel – also a longtime Downers Grove resident – is now “mostly retired,” but he still enjoys food and fun, just with a bit more time now for family. Over a glass of wine and appetizers at Pierce Tavern, Hinsdale Magazine Group’s Valerie Hardy caught up with this consummate foodie about his life, storied career, and time after retiring from the Tribune.

Hinsdale Magazine Group: What is your connection to the western suburbs?

Phil Vettel: My wife, Paula, and I bought a house in Downers Grove back in March of 1981, and I have lived in the same house this whole time. We really like the house and the property, but when our second child was on the way, the house started to feel small. Nothing makes a house feel smaller than babies with all their apparatuses. So, we decided to build on, expanding our home.

HMG: Do you still have family in the area?

PV: My wife passed away four years ago. Both of my sons attended Downers Grove North High School, but now one of my sons lives in Houston and the other is in the Nashville area. It’s nice because I can always jump on a plane and get away from here if there is a horrible snowstorm coming. I have two grandsons and a granddaughter due in August. My grandsons call me Pupah (G is a tough consonant for little kids).

HMG: Where are you originally from, and how did you end up in Illinois?

PV: I’m originally from New York City, but around my fifteenth birthday, my parents were divorcing, and we moved to Florida. I came up here for college. I started at Northwestern University and then got my journalism training at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. They had just hired three new faculty members – former newspaper men in their first year teaching – and I stayed with them and soaked up everything they had to say.

HMG: What was your pathway out of college into a career in journalism?

PV: I was in a hurry to graduate from college at a point. I had taken my sweet time until then. Part of the reason I had been in this six-year BA program is because I had a chance to join a bar band…so I quit school to be in a rock and roll band, playing in Chicago for about a year. It was time to get back to school, so I did that for another year, then ran out of money, so I took another year off and worked as a bus boy, bartender, and waiter. Finally, back in school and ready to graduate, I applied for a job at what was then the Suburban Tribune… They asked me to send in a resume, and I couldn’t send it in right away – because I didn’t have a resume. Fortunately, Eastern had computers with floppy disks – not many places were that advanced at the time – so I printed off 100 resumes and stuck one in an envelope. They hired me – my one and only job interview. Looking at the hysterical resume I put together (I had a year here, a year there in school), I’m not sure how I got the job. I must have done ok on the interview.

HMG: What was your first role at the newspaper?

PV: I was hired to be, essentially, the real estate editor. We’re talking 1979, and back then, mortgages had super-high interest rates, but it was also when the industry first came up with the adjustable rate mortgage. It was actually a really interesting job!

HMG: How did you go from writing about real estate to writing about restaurants?

PV: They remembered that I had been in a band, and one day they said, “There’s a nightclub – we review their acts – maybe you’d be interested in that.” The answer is always yes at your first job! So, I began reviewing acts at the Blue Max, a nightclub at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare. There were some big acts. I saw Frank Sinatra Jr., B.B. King, The Pointer Sisters. A comic would open up the shows – and the comic they picked was this skinny, Black kid from Cleveland – Arsenio Hall – and once upon a time I was sitting with my pencil and paper writing about how he did.

The other thing they said is, “We review restaurants, and maybe you could do that,” so I did that too.  I moved down to the big paper [The Chicago Tribune], and I wound up in the features section.

HMG: How did you balance work as a restaurant critic and time with family?

PV: It was a great gig! I got to write, try all different things, do some traveling. It wasn’t that much of a family strain… Plus, my wife and I always had two [paid] date nights per week – Friday and Saturday. My kids grew up saying, “Who’s the babysitter tonight?”

The kids didn’t come around to [joining in on the dining perks] until high school. Then they heard from their friends, “Wow! Your dad does that?” and they wanted to go to not tell their friends they never went. Even so, they didn’t want to do the whole big thing – until my one son’s 25^th birthday, when he said he had always wanted to go to Alinea. I asked if he was sure he didn’t want a used car instead, since it would cost about the same! We did go to Alinea.

“I used to write reviews and explain what cilantro was. Back then, the high point of dining used to be steak Diane and cherries jubilee – flamed tableside, a big honking deal… Today, people are much more sophisticated and harder to impress.”  – Phil Vettel on how the restaurant industry has changed

HMG: How have things changed in the restaurant industry since you started as a food critic?

PV: It was a different time. The role didn’t have quite the prestige it does now. Food was just becoming a really big part of our culture. Then, I could probably name three celebrity chefs total; now, I can probably name five or six in DuPage County.

One of the biggest, most significant, changes is how smart the consumers, the diners, have gotten. I used to write reviews and explain what cilantro was. Back then, the high point of dining used to be steak Diane and cherries jubilee – flamed tableside, a big honking deal… Today, people are much more sophisticated and harder to impress.

On the chef side, the level of training has really gone up, and the business savvy. Chefs got more creative, took higher risks in putting out food people might not understand, but it got embraced, and they made money off of it.  One thing chefs always say about the Chicago market is how open diners are to it. They’ll try it – they’re not afraid.

HMG: Has the increase in cooking competition and other culinary shows had an impact on diners or the restaurant industry?

PV: You could make a strong case that TV shows and competitions of that kind drive more butts into seats than the Michelin guide, and I’m not exaggerating. Television, in general, is the great corrupter, though. Not only do they put out inaccurate images, but there’s also a certain seductiveness that can get people into buying and doing stuff that they ordinarily wouldn’t… I had dinner with Bobby Flay once, and he was nowhere near as outsized at a sit-down dinner as he is on TV. Television is not inherently dishonest; it’s just amplified.

HMG: What was most rewarding about your career as a restaurant critic?

PV: I was very happy to chronicle Charlie Trotter’s career. I started right around when he started. He’d call me up from time to time, always making a joke. That was really rewarding. Also watching Grant Achatz. I first got to taste his food in Evanston and be there for the first iteration of Alinea.  I was very happy to be around for that.

I was also on the James Beard committee for 11 years, which gave me a unique seat, from which I could advocate for Chicago and other Midwest restaurants… I was still only one vote, but I was on the committee and could persuade other committee voters to go to those places.

HMG: Were there any downsides to your job as a restaurant critic?

PV: I decided early on that I had to review restaurants at least once on a Friday or Saturday night to experience the absolute chaos of a weekend night at these restaurants. That dictated our social life. We couldn’t make plans unless friends wanted to come with. Then, not only did I pick the restaurant, but we’d look at the menu, and I’d tell them what they could eat.

HMG: What was your approach to reviewing restaurants?

PV: I would usually wait six weeks after a restaurant opened until I went in to let them get their footing. I’d wait four weeks between the first and second visit. Then I’d try to go one more time… Until 2018, when I took off the so-called mask and put my name and face in the paper, I would make the reservations under fake last names. I had credit cards in different last names.

Even with good resources, we still had limited resources. We only published one review a week. If I used that one review to slam a place, I’d feel like I let the readers down…so even if it wasn’t the best, I would share what to order if you are going to go there… Every restaurant has two dishes that they do extremely well. The best restaurants have all the dishes they do really great.

In the good old days, people would show up to restaurants with my column torn out to [guide their ordering]. I would always talk to the chef before publication, and one thing I’d ask them is if they are still doing [a certain] dish, just so they knew and could prepare and not run out of dishes I recommended.

HMG: You’re retired now? How are you spending your time?

PV: I’m semi-retired. I took a buyout in 2021. It was time. My wife was very sick at the time and passed away four years ago.

I got a consulting gig for a restaurant group – working on tastings, menus, launching new restaurants. I learned a lot about the business… Also, for the last couple years, I’ve been writing a monthly column (restaurant features) for Naperville Magazine.

Otherwise, I putter around the house, making sure the garden looks nice. That was what Paula did. I need to keep that up.

I’m not bored at all. I make my own fun, and I still get into the city – especially during the summer.

HMG: What are some of your favorite restaurants close to home?

PV: I like Pierce Tavern and have had good luck at Gia Mia in Downers Grove. I’m very fond of Petite Vie in Western Springs. Thassos and Il Mio in Clarendon Hills too, and further out west, Craft Urban in Geneva and Aurora.

HMG: What is a restaurant that closed but you wish was still around?

PV: Carlucci up on Butterfield. Now it’s Cooper’s Hawk, which has a good thing going – insanely reasonably priced wine.