Sarah Stegner
The Ritz-Carlton
Dining Room
160 E. Pearson St.
312-266-1000
Contemporary French with Midwest influences
Only in her mid-30s, Sarah Stegner has already won numerous prestigious awards, including being selected as the “Best Midwest Chef in 1998” by the James Beard Foundation. “It’s pretty amazing,” Stegner says modestly. “However, every day you walk back in the kitchen and work a 14-hour day and your feet hurt; it brings you down to reality pretty fast.”
A native of Evanston, where her grandmother was a caterer, Stegner studied classical guitar at Northwestern. Meanwhile, she started waitressing, then enrolled at the Dumas Pere cooking school in Glenview.
In 1990 she was named chef of the Ritz-Carlton Chicago Dining Room, chosen as “Best Restaurant in Chicago in 1996” by Gourmet magazine. She describes the cuisine as “contemporary French, with a Midwest influence.” Her signature dishes include Colorado rack of lamb with pesto and served with basil-goat cheese whipped potatoes, as well as smoked salmon.
Stegner is a founder of the Women Chefs of Chicago. She believes Chicago is a “fantastic place” to live, and that Chicagoans are becoming more adventurous eaters. In 1984 when she joined the Ritz as an apprentice, her first job was cleaning fish 12 hours a day. “It was hard to get through,” she recalls with a smile. “The smell just doesn’t go away. Oh, you stop smelling it, but nobody else does.”