Chefs

Time Out Profiles Mindy Segal’s Turning Point

A few weeks ago we mentioned that Hot Chocolate was briefly closing to fix the air conditioning and a few other things. Well, true, but it turns out there was more to be fixed than that, as David Tamarkin ably tells in a Time Out Chicago profile. It turns out that, under the pressure of seeing hot new places open constantly on Randolph street, chef and owner Mindy Segal was considering leasing a much larger space for a bakery and restaurant. But that was its own kind of pressure and, at the advice of her former boss Michael Kornick, she fled to a Arizona spa and retreat to rethink her place in the food scene— and her life so far. We won’t spoil the twists and turns of the story— simple and surely not uncommon, but heartfeltly told; we’ll just say, go read it. Segal is up for her seventh pastry chef nomination at the James Beard Foundation Chef Awards tonight; famously she’s never won, and surely she deserves to. But in any case, there’s something else this story will make clear she deserves: your patronage at Hot Chocolate, one of the city’s small neighborhood gems. [TOC]

Time Out Profiles Mindy Segal’s Turning Point