Rick Bayless is squarely in the pantheon of American chefs, up there with Keller, Batali, Achatz and the like, winner of the first (and best) Top Chef Masters, multiple James Beard Award recipient, maestro of the White House State Dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe Calderon, little things like that. Nothing in there suggests that Rick Bayless is going to be trading his chef whites for panstick and spot lighting, but he has, sort of, in the Lookingglass’ new extravaganza Cascabel, an apparent combination of theater, fine dining, and acrobatics in which Bayless plays, naturally, the Chef. The show itself looks like the finest kind of mayhem – there’s contortionists, a tightrope walker, a pair of, ah, “mouth jugglers”, a flamenco guitarist, and a woman who pours wine while dangling from a trapeze – and in the middle of it all, there’s Rick Bayless, calmly chopping away. (FULL ARTICLE: Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times)
Art News
Forget Dinner and a Show; in Lookingglass’ new “Cascabel”, Dinner Is the Show
March 29, 2012