Every week Joe Sochor packs up his kitchen and brings it to a new location. Last November Sochor started FoodRave, a floating restaurant offering constantly changing menus with sometimes telling and sometimes not-so-telling names like “Tribute to Charlie Trotter’s” and “Invented in Chicago.”
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“People are not just tumbling in off the street,” he says. Occasionally an extra person shows up, but, according to Sochor, numbers have not been a problem. Kitchen equipment in other people’s houses is another story.
At a December waffle breakfast, Sochor blew out the kitchen fuses five times before breakfast finally made it to the table. “I didn’t realize how much energy those big waffle irons use.”
At the same dinner, Sochor invited several Chicago writers to read poems and prose about food. Diners sprawled under an oak tree and listened to the readings. “Here’s an end-of-the-world poem with chow mein noodles in it,” one reader said by way of introduction. Meanwhile Sochor set up the table, fanned the flames on a charcoal grill, and hopped back and forth between the grill and the guests to introduce each reader.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
