Jackie's: France meets the Orient in Chicago

Nation's Restaurant News, May 8, 1989 by Carolyn Walkup

JACKIE'S France meets the Orient in Chicago

Artistry in the kitchen has distinguished Jackie's restaurant in Chicago since Jackie Shen, an immigrant from Hong Kong, opened it in 1982.

A demanding perfectionist who starts work at 4 a.m., Shen excels in producing beautifully garnished plates of French and sometimes slightly Oriental nouvelle cuisine in her modest double storefront. Although she has trained a stable kitchen staff over the years, she personally works the line daily, five days a week.

Shen began her restaurant career in the front of the house, managing hotel restaurants for the Ritz-Carlton and Hyatt. She switched to the kitchen at the Park Hyatt in Chicago and at the former French seafood restaurant La Mer, where she worked for another perfectionist, Jean Banchet, proprietor of Le Francais in suburban Wheeling. She further immersed herself in French cooking at Le Ciel Bleu in the Mayfair Regent Hotel before buying her own restaurant on North Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Helping her get started were her husband, Pierre Etcheber, former wine steward at Le Francais, and Jeff Jackson, now executive chef at La Tour at the Park Hyatt. (She and Etcheber are now divorced.) Good reviews came quickly, "and I built my confidence," says Shen, admitting that French restaurants, even her own, intimidated her.

She grew still more confident in her abilities three years later when she was one of 13 Chicago chefs chosen to star in the PBS television series "Great Chefs of Chicago."

Gradually, Shen introduced Oriental ingredients into some of her French preparations, drawing on her ethnic background. She did not use Chinese techniques, however, because she wanted to continue to be known as a French chef.

"A few years ago I thought I could do two different restaurants, like a Chinois or Eurasia, but I didn't have enough money," Shen says. So she chose to offer her new blended dishes as daily specials.

Today about three-fourths of the menu remains French, with one-fourth a blend of French and Oriental. Her rich desserts, including her signature chocolate bag filled with white chocolate mousse and fresh berries, remain strictly Western.

The resulting menu features French classics, such as Dover sole with scallop mousse in a puff pastry shell with julienned leeks and a butter sauce next to an East-West hybrid of orange-honey-glazed squab with Chinese vermicelli, Napa cabbage, cashews and raspberry sauce, or sashimi-style tuna served with lemon butter sauce.

Shen spares no expense to buy the finest ingredients, including Beluga caviar and edible flowers. Although her food costs run about 41 percent of sales, she has no plans to lower them.

"I pride myself on good food, good service, and good ambience. I would rather cook to my own satisfaction instead of seeing dollar signs ringing in front of my eyes," Shen says.

Her motivation in recently expanding the restaurant to the adjacent storefront was more to enhance her guests' comfort than to cram in a lot more seats, she said. She alloted a good portion of the additional space to a waiting area, service bar, and baby grand piano rather than to seating, adding just 30 more for a total of 90.

As part of the expansion, she tripled the size of the kitchen, which now functions even more efficiently than before.

To achieve the proper pacing of each guest's meal, Jackie's staggers reservations at half-hour intervals, accepting a limited number for each time slot. On weekends tables turn two or three times, and reservations typically fill several weeks ahead.

While she spends her time cooking and supervising the kitchen, she counts on her dining room staff to represent her to the guests. "They are me out there," she explains. "They give me feedback on what we are doing right or not."

Most employees sought out her restaurant, she notes, and are career-minded. "I give them hell during the first few weeks until eventually they understand my attitude," she says. "Those that make it stay."

PHOTO : Jackie Shen works on one of her signature dishes in the kitchen.

PHOTO : Jackie's exterior is an unimposing storefront.

PHOTO : One of the two dining rooms in the Lincoln Park restaurant.

PHOTO : Lobster and scallops, a signature dish.