CHARLIE TROTTER CHANGED HOW AMERICA DINES

NEARLY 40 YEARS AFTER THE CHICAGO CHEF REDEFINED AMERICAN COOKING WITH HIS NAMESAKE RESTAURANT, HIS LEGACY THRIVES

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CHARLIE TROTTER WAS ONCE ASKED WHAT his perfect final meal would be. He focused not just on the food, but the place, the people and the wine. The venue would be a cliff above the sea. "I want to take in the sweeping views of this gorgeous planet before I leave it," he said. "I would eat many courses of raw, tiny and delicate seafood. China plates would be full of wonderful oysters, crustaceans, sardines and anchovies." Miles Davis would play with Bob Dylan. Trotter would sit at a table with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. They would drink Château Margaux 1900.

Trotter's life story is almost as fantastic as his imagined meal, whose intricate details he shared with photographer and author Melania Dunea in 2006 for her book My Last Supper.

At the age of 28, with just five years of experience in kitchens, he opened his namesake restaurant in Chicago in 1987. The townhouse at 816 West Armitage Avenue, featuring a brass plaque decorated with a giant "T" and the words "Charlie Trotter's," ascended to become the dining mecca of the Windy City, guided by a precocious culinary mastermind. After 25 years, he closed its doors in 2012 and retired from cooking. Within a year, the 54-year-old was dead from a stroke.

"He was brilliant," says Larry Stone, who served as wine director at Trotter's for five years. "He was like a meteor or a shooting star."

"Charlie was the first chef in the country to try so many new things in food," adds chef Emeril Lagasse, a close friend.

Trotter brought incredible intensity to the kitchen, his drive based on the idea that he could offer guests the best dining experience in the world. To that end, within a few years of opening he began serving tasting menus exclusively at a time when the concept was seen only in high-end European restaurants.