Supper with Sylvia #8 Ever's Michael Muser on the Banchet Awards

Every year Chicago restaurant insiders gather for the annual Jean Banchet Awards. Named after the legend behind the famed Le Francias Restaurant in suburban Wheeling, the honor recognizes original talent behind Chicago's most loved establishments, touching on pizza, pastries, fine wine and great neighborhood joints. Its most enthusiastic supporter and master of ceremony this year is Michael Muser of the Michelin starred "Ever." In this episode of Supper with Sylvia, Muser promises the January 26th event will be a night to remember.  

SHOW NOTES:
thebanchetawards.com
ever-restaurant.com

This episode is produced by Jane Stephens
Original music and audio engineering by Donnie Cutting

Check out SupperwithSylvia on Instagram.
Email us at SupperwithSylvia@gmail.com

Transcript

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In a nod to the great French-American chef, Jean Banchet, some of the most talented restaurateurs in the Chicago area will gather later this month to honor culinary superstars like Banchet. PBS and Bon Appetit magazine helped make him the original celebrity chef with his famed La Francais restaurant in suburban Wheeling, Illinois. It attracted epicures from all over the world from the 1970s until its closing in 2001.

Banchet died in 2013, but his legacy lives on through this annual honor. Today, its most enthusiastic supporter is Michael Muser, tireless partner behind the two Michelin-starred Ever restaurant and this year's master of ceremony. Welcome to this episode of Supper with Sylvia.

Michael Muser, how are you? I'm good Sylvia, how are you? I am doing great. So good to see you as always. And we decided we had to talk because the big Banchet Awards are coming up. It's at the end of the month and actually it'll be a few days after this podcast drops. Tell everybody what is the Jean Banchet Awards? So the Jean Banchet Awards have been around for quite some time in different iterations for about the past like 15, 20 years to be honest.

And they always serve kind of like the same purpose, which was every once a year, you know, the Chicago hospitality industry would kind of take a breather and sit back and figure out, know, basically who was killing it this year in very much like the same kind of categories that you see float up and other awards programs along the same lines of like chef of the year, restaurant of the year, best heritage restaurant of the year, best neighborhood restaurant of the year.

Over those years, once I had become involved with it and stuff, it became very obvious that our city, Chicago, had such a vibrant, alive, living, breathing food and beverage world that even every 12 months, it was worth revisiting. It was worth taking a look at. It was fun to see who was really crushing it and opened that restaurant that year, and it was super topical.

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It also became very apparent to me in what I was doing it and became involved with it and started putting on the show and emceeing it and stuff. How incredibly touching and important, awesome, for lack of a better word, it was to get, to let that dining room manager get an award for something that they slave at so much of their lives, right? And then,

to give them the opportunity to stand up on a stage where the microphone, it's a simple thing, right? On a stage with a mic quietly in front of an audience that is paying attention so that they can say thank you to their teammates. It's like the most powerful thing you could possibly imagine when you watch someone look at somebody else in the audience and be like, and you for that breakfast sandwich you bring me in the mornings. You know, it's like, it's just the little things that make our lives livable. And the Bonche Awards,

when you win one, get to stand up and you get to say thank you to your work family. And it's very emotional and fun and fun and fun to be at. I love that because the Banchet Awards went away for a little while. You've been MCing for like the last 10 years and I want to tell everybody.

I can't imagine a Banchet Awards without Michael. You are the best MC. You are so funny. You're so talented. I love how you slide in these kind of food jokes that people in the food world get, and maybe nobody else. You're so funny. But it's so important because I have seen how much it means not only to the people who work at the restaurants, but to the restaurateurs that you acknowledge that we see what you're doing, especially after the pandemic when it's been so tough on so many

of these restaurants, you kind of helped to resurrect this because it went away for a while, didn't it? Yeah, I mean, the pandemic hit everybody hard. know, that's the stupidest statement ever. The pandemic destroyed us. It wiped the slate almost completely clean. A friend of ours, Chef Brian Enyart, who's now over in the kitchen at Lena Brava, he said to me one time, it was so on point, he goes,

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The pandemic has wiped out our sophomore and junior classmen. We have only left now irritated, angry seniors and freshmen being freshmen, not knowing lingo, way of flow. know, those sophomores and those juniors had disappeared and just left this and we're still in repair. And yes, it just didn't seem for a while they're like,

It was award-giving time. You know, was such a strange way to go about it. And yeah, we pushed to get the award show back up on its feet. And I'll tell you something specific to this year, because each year is totally different, right? The year we came back after the pandemic, was uber emotional, because there was just so much to be said. And it had been so long since everyone had seen each other. And we actually felt like friends and community. So it gave us a reason to do that. This past year, 2024 was hard.

It was tough. Numbers were hard. Business was hard. Inflation took its toll. You know, we live in this horrible place where, you know, we buy the stuff too. And then we have to make it and then we have to sell it. And everybody just kind of seemed to struggle in 2024 in that sense. It created a lot of hardships, a lot of difficulties. And when the Banchet and Nominees came out this year,

It was so awesome. Everyone was so elated, so excited to like get some good news. Right. To hear like, holy wow, those that got nominated were just like, they needed it. You could tell. It felt good. It felt good. I love what you do too, because we were fortunate enough, you invited us and thank you for that, to follow you guys as you surprised one of the nominees, John Swinwyne.

And you like this is all a thing you love to do. You love to go and you love to surprise them in person. Tell me how this has come about. It's a thing now. Yeah, I like that the Banchet Awards tries to be as hospitable as it can because it's a hospitality award show. So I don't want you to just find out in an email or I don't want you to get a call on the day that we hand out the nominees before we go to the press.

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so that it's given strictly to just the nominees to have as their information so that they can post on it or be proud of it or not. It's up to them. We hand deliver these things. We send out like six crews. I mean, there's like 12 or 13 categories. Each category has more nominees in the category. Everybody's got to get into cars and go all over the Chicago-led area and hand deliver these things. And they do have

Those are also fun, special moments. Oftentimes they're in the middle of service or they're at that classic round table in the afternoon. Everyone's got coffee. They're talking about what's going to go on that day or how many covers they have that night. And then in walks this silly crew of people wearing blue and white t-shirts. They look like publishers clearing house, basically. And they're like, yo, you got nominated for a Bonche this year. And they try and step up and have fun.

And I think that people really appreciate it. And I think that the nominees really appreciate that it's theirs. It's theirs for that moment, you know? In 48 hours, we tell them, this goes live to press. Everyone's going to know it won't be yours anymore. But right now, it's just you. It's just yours. Have fun. And we'll be right back.

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Wow. I have to say, like, I tell people when people say to me, what are the Banchet Awards? And tell me, is this fair? I'd like to say to people who don't know, if you know James Beard, it is the James Beard Awards of Chicago, right? So this is a game changer for these restaurants just even being nominated, isn't it? Yes. I think that over the years, we've kind of learned to be serious about it in certain corners because yes,

If you get nominated, I mean, look, the running joke is that if you win a Banchet award, we tell this joke all the time. If you win a Banchet award, you should hold onto it. Cause if you can collect three, you can trade those in for one James Beard nomination. Right? That's usually like what it is. We laugh and poke fun at ourselves like all the time. We almost in some ways don't want to be taken that serious because we have a lot of fun with what we do. But yeah, for sure. We have sat back and watched previous nominees of

Banchet Awards that have then gone on, right? It's like led to, it gets you maybe that little bit of needed attention to get press, get people, know, foodies, the people that do that stuff, to get them into your house and taste your sandwich or taste your burger or, you know, have that taco that you're doing and blow their minds. If the Banchets can lend a hand in that, if they can act as like a boots on the ground stepping stone,

to future accolades, I think it's great. I think it's fantastic. It is fantastic. I have to say Chicago, know, Samtoya with the restaurant association, love to always say it's the restaurant capital of the world. great Samtoya. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But I feel like this is something that is kind of bringing the spotlight, not only on the restaurants, but back on the food scene, which

is incredible, which is why I want to say how in the world do you pick who the winners are or who the nominees are? How does this work? Because you've got a lot to choose from in this town. ridiculous. So the first thing I like to say is I have nothing to do with that. I have to stay friendly with everyone. I'm not a part of that, but I love the question and I've learned to love the question. How does it work? Because it's just such an obvious question to ask. So we have a

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secret panel, a Banchet panel. And they are made up of the likes of which you would expect food writers and professional journalists in some sense, but also a handful of civilians and some industry cats in the room. And they debate throughout the year as to what will be that list of final four nominees for each category. And they also decide who will be

eventually the winner for that each individual category. They meet at least once a month for the entire year leading up to when we start getting serious about needing nominees and answers just logistically, right? Okay, we got to put a show on on the 26th when all this stuff has to get done. So we definitely are going to need this list completed by this date. And they are on 12 different communication devices, but a lot on Slack.

where they are just, yo, I tasted this, ooh, go get that. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And it sounds like a lot of fun, right? But it's exhaustingly, it's so much work. And every five seconds, one of them is eating something that they think everyone else should go take a look at, you know? And there's feverish amounts of healthy and positive, but debate. Lots and lots of debate. And we rarely have like big collisions philosophically.

unless somebody stupid brings up, do a pizza category. let's talk. Yeah. We tried it last year and it didn't work out. was like we couldn't, they couldn't come up with a list that was, you know, it's funny because like sometimes these categories mean something. When I said pizza, they said, okay, but what are we doing with this? Is it one Tavern, one Detroit? Like, are we going to try and pay homage to different styles or are we just going to say,

these are the pizza joints of the year for us, right? These are just the ones that are just screaming. And so you have to kind of settle in philosophically as to what you want the category to do, what you want it to say. And then once everyone's in agreement on that, they can go and find the selections. Wow. So yes, let's talk about that. Cause this is the first year you guys have added the pizza category, which is crazy in Chicago. mean, you talk about debate. How tough was it for them to narrow down?

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the restaurants and how many are there in that category? So there are four pizza spots in this category, just like all the other categories. We're only doing it one time just for this one year because we've always thought that the Banchet Awards being as small as it is and having just a tiny market or not, but you know, but just Chicago to deal with that it could be fluid for a long time. Food trucks were like huge. Remember pop-up dinners like these pop-up events? They were all over the city. So we

literally created an alternative dining category. And the alternative dining category lived for as long as these restaurants were just going nuts. They tended to cool off. So we pulled the category back and I thought, let's just, let's do these pop-up categories. Let's just pay homage to Chicago pizza. We're a food award program. How do we ignore it? It's not fair. a controversial category. And so how they came up with it was just like what they always do. A big list.

got shrunk down to a medium sized list and a feverish amount of debate. And then here's the fun part was that we, not even our expert panel group, wanted to choose a They washed their hands of it. So the deal was that they would pick the final four and I would find a fun way to actually choose a winner. And what we thought, and this is gonna be so much fun, I can't wait for you to see this, is when you go to the Banchet Awards on January 26th, if you can get a ticket, you get checked in.

And then right next to check it, when you check in, you get your ticket and then you also get a pepperoni, you know, like a small pepperoni slice or whatever, not a real one, but you know, like that's your voter chip, right? Your pepperoni chip is your voter chip. And then next door to that, we're going to have these huge pizza ballot boxes and you will open up the top of it and put your pepperoni ballot.

in whichever box is, it'll be four boxes, one for each pizza joint. So as you're walking in, you will physically place your pepperoni thing in the slot. Wow. I for your pizza spot. And then that night we have Steve Dolinsky coming, who is going to announce the winner. And the winner of course will be delivered to him on stage with a briefcase handcuffed to someone's wrist. And you know, we'll do it very carefully. I love it. Yeah. Steve is the ultimate

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pizza person here in Chicago with his tours, with his tours and his book. that is awesome. have security guards in front of the ballot boxes for which we are calling our polizia. You guys are having so much fun with this. I absolutely love this. I want to talk about two of the categories now that we've mentioned pizza that I thought are always big ones. And that's restaurant of the year and best new restaurant. And I'm looking

I love this because I notice in Restaurant of the Year and in Best New Restaurant, there's one chef who's in both categories and that's John Mannion. He's got El Shea, Restaurant of the Year nominee and also Bracero, Best New Restaurant. mean, how exciting is that for him? It's huge. know, he, listen, he's a staple for us, right? Like, so many people love what they do.

and are so supportive of them. Like everybody's just really happy to have them a part of our community. When we put the list together, when the list is being put together, we're incredibly mindful of double nominees. We're very careful to make sure that we spread the butter across all of the bread. so when someone gets...

When a restaurant group or when someone's just firing on all cylinders and they deserve it two separate categories, this is like a good thing for them. It's a big signal that the panel was very impressed. Well, I'll mention the rest then. So Restaurant of the Year is El Che, Steakhouse and Bar, Avek, El Skate, Rosemary, and then best new restaurants, Carino, Bracero, John's Food and Wine, and Oliver's. So those are in those two categories. And there are so many more and people can go online.

and look up John Banchet Awards and find out who some of the other nominees are. It was so good to talk to you, so much fun. Looking forward to the Banchet Awards and keep doing what you do to boost Chicago's dining scene. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Supper with Sylvia. I'm Sylvia Perez. This podcast was produced by Jane Stephens with technical support and music by Donnie Cutting.