Michael Gebert, Writer: Portfolio of Food Journalism

Michael Gebert is a James Beard Foundation award-winning food video producer, writer and photographer. He has written for publications including the Chicago Reader, Time Out Chicago, Saveur.com and Maxim, and was the Chicago editor of Grub Street Chicago from 2011 to its closing in 2013. Here are samples of work in various genres.

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INTERVIEWS/PROFILES

Sepia’s Andrew Zimmerman On Being a First-Time Beard Nominee (And Kids Today) (Grub Street)

“I still had this idea that even if the music thing doesn’t work out, something will present itself that will seem sensible as a proper career, because this cooking thing is kind of a knucklehead job. I mean, I was surrounded by not really the top caliber of cooks. The guys who were running the seafood restaurant on the Jersey Shore were not guys who were ever going to go work for Thomas Keller.”

Father-and-son Mexican-American dreams clash at Cemitas Puebla (Reader)

“My dad has the immigrant’s idea of the big American dream,” Tony says. “I know I could open a restaurant in Wicker Park and it would be packed. But I don’t want to give my kids fancy clothes and the biggest house on the block, but they feel like they don’t know their dad.”

The Pitmasters (Time Out Chicago)

“Sometimes after I get through barbecuin’, I take everything off the pit. I open it up and just admire my fire. I’m sure that’s part of the allure of barbecue. Sometimes you just look at the fire and think, I just cooked this meat, and look how beautiful it is.”

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Chefs Who Downshifted (Where Chicago)

“I wanted to challenge myself in other ways,” Merges explains. “I wanted to take some of the truths of fine dining—attention to detail, great service, a well thought-out and thoughtful wine and beverage program, crafted cuisine—and apply them to other kinds of restaurants.”

Mario’s Table, The Neighborhood Restaurant a Gold Coast Neighborhood Needed (Grub Street)

“I’m not gonna say I have the best meatballs. Everybody’s got the best meatballs. But they’re real. I’m pretty real, the place is pretty real.”

Ryan Poli doesn’t want to be a story any more (Reader)

As he explains it, I realize that what it’s about is things like exactly what I’m doing: Trying to make drama out of the life of a guy who just wants to make food. A guy who wanted the head-down kitchen life, the brotherhood of cooks, and found himself reading about his hair in magazines instead.

Anarchists eating Gettysburgers: Farewell to a supremely strange restaurant (Reader)

See, this is where I run into a problem as a foodie who believes firmly that the revolution will come when the food on your plate gets more local and natural. You could talk Trotsky and Bakunin all you wanted at the Lincoln Restaurant, but pretty much anything you ordered there came with Kraft cheese on top of it, ensuring that industrial capitalism was getting its cut from your discussions.

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REVIEWS/ROUNDUPS

Take a Savage Journey With Next: The Hunt (Grub Street)

It is a meal devoted to meat, yes— though vegetables are by no means ignored— but one conceived in the context of how humans collect that meat and how they dress it up culturally to tell themselves they are something other than just another mammal, red in tooth and claw.

Dispatches From the Land Beyond Food: Elizabeth, Kai Zan (Sky Full of Bacon)

As with a Terence Malick movie, either you’re in for trying to keep up with a completely personal journey, which will sometimes frustrate you but promises showing you something you’ve never seen before… or you shouldn’t even start. Part of the thing about going in the woods is that people do get lost there.

Phillip Foss’s Backyard Barbecue of the Mind [EL Ideas] (Sky Full of Bacon)

The first course is called shima ajii, consisting of tuna and grated smoked bonito over tapioca— a combination that sounds like it could be hideous, frankly, like smoked chubs in cottage cheese. But it’s not— it’s creamy and smokily subtle and complex. A deconstructed caesar— who hasn’t deconstructed a caesar by now? Yet instead of being a puzzle of disconnected blocks, it was more like caesar reconstruction, putting its flavors back together out of different textures, one or two at a time.

The 25 Best Tacos in Chicago (Grub Street)

The main attraction here is the ladies patting out tortillas by hand and freshly frying on the cafeteria line. You could put a gym shoe in their handiwork and it would taste fantastic.

Best Chef Downshift, Animal Division (from Reader Best of Chicago issue)

The entire shop is burbling with an unashamed meat lovers’ ferment, turning out everything from sausages to sloppy joes to deeply meaty soups, while entire sides of beef and pork are plopped down next to the diner at the counter and chefs and farmers pass each other in the doorway and the staff cuts away with long knives and spinning slicers.

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COLUMNS/ANALYSIS/HUMOR

Is This The Worst New York Times Piece on Chicago’s Scene Ever? (Grub Street)

Rosenbloom’s mastery of familiar forms is impressive— she segues effortlessly from the Yelpian self-absorption of “this looked like the kind of place I would never go to, but I went anyway” to the Fodor’s-like catalogue of thuddingly obvious tourist landmarks.

Meet the Great (Well, Pretty Good) Unknown Chicago Chicken Sandwich (Serious Eats)

At that moment, the plain simplicity, the essential honesty of the Chicago Greek grilled chicken sandwich, white meat and mayo and a hint of seasoning and char, is a balm. Which it wouldn’t be if some jackwad slapped oily melted cheese and BBQ sauce all over the damn thing and called it Tuscan Jackwad Chicken With Sun-Dried Asiago Pesto Il Magnifico.

The great Alinea Baby scandal shocks the social media world, or not (Reader)

As much as we’re all interested in everything chef Achatz thinks and does, and as much as we imagine that if we follow him on Twitter we’re in his inner circle (along with 81,000 other people), maybe chefs shouldn’t be tweeting, even thoughtfully/inquiringly, about paying guests.

Making Sense of the Whole Marilyn Hagerty Olive Garden Review Fiasco (Grub Street)

Hagerty, whose career must date back to at least the Eisenhower era, is on one side of the sixties, while those mocking her review grew up in the aftermath of that era when absolute truthfulness and letting it all hang out came to be prized over the social cohesion and repressive high-mindedness of the fifties.

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FOOD HISTORY

Aqua Team Hunger Force (Time Out Chicago)

In Texas, they use long metal sarcophagi encrusted with a century of holy barbecue grime. In Tennessee, they spread-eagle pigs over a pit made of bricks. But in Chicago, much of the best barbecue comes from a gleaming, Miesian glass-and-steel box that barbecue fans call an “aquarium smoker” for its fish-tank appearance. How did such a modern-looking device come to be the mark of ’cue tradition here—and nowhere else?

Chicago, vegetarian capital of America (c. 1905)

Before, vegetarianism told you to grow a cabbage for yourself and eat it, now it’s creating a product for you. There’s also even a way to industrialize it yourself, the Vegetarian Society Mill, which they sold for grinding nuts and other things to make your own fake meats. This seems a very Chicago contribution to the movement.

Asian-Inspired, Genius Level Drunk Food at… Hamburger King? (Serious Eats)

An ancient [internet] post suggests a connection to the Japanese pancake okonomiyaki, but I’d more likely connect it to the kind of Asian fusion practiced by Navy cooks in the South Pacific tossing local ingredients in with their standard issue provisions.

Swedish Restaurant Owner, Leader of Vanished Community Dies (Grub Street)

Why, exactly, couldn’t an attractive Swedish woman with experience get a job in a non-Swedish restaurant? 1950s prejudice against Swedes? Did that exist? Was she perceived as some kind of rube straight off the turnip farm, like Loretta Young in The Farmer’s Daughter? Will anyone ever tell the story of the Swedish-American struggle against injustice?

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CHEF/RESTAURANT VIDEO

Besides my own video podcast series, I’ve made a number of shorter pieces going inside restaurants or interviewing chefs— plus the dozens of episodes of the Key Ingredient series for the Chicago Reader.


Chronicling Charlie Trotter’s last big blowout.


Interviewing Top Chef star Fabio Viviani about his new Chicago restaurant.


Cutting cheese at an 80-year-old Italian grocery.


Previewing Grant Achatz’s Next just before it opened.

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PHOTOGRAPHY

I consider myself “a journalist who can shoot nice pictures” more than a professional photographer per se, but here are some of my better photo shoots:

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Four hours in the kitchen with Next’s Bocuse d’Or menu (Reader)

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First look at Fat Rice’s new Macanese dim sum brunch (Reader)

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The Finely Crafted Comfort Food at Guildhall in Glencoe (Grub Street)

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Preview Endgrain’s Comfort Food, Menus, and Unholy Good Biscuits (Grub Street)

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Praise the Lard, the Barbecue Competition That Takes Over a Whole Town (Grub Street)

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First Look Inside Moderno, John des Rosiers’ Highland Park Italian Trendsetter (Grub Street)