Because I was certain the food served at the Nebula Awards banquet in Chicago Saturday night would be barely edible at best and not at all edible at worst, I was determined to at least have a decent—nay, superior!—lunch so not all my meals that day would feel wasted. And I found that superior lunch at Big Jones, which I discovered thanks to a post which ran two weeks ago over at Eater.

Chef Paul Fehribach (whose food I was so taken with that I bought a copy of his cookbook as soon as the meal was over and had him autograph it) has long been in love with Southern cooking, and has dedicated his life to tracking down historic recipes and presenting food as it originally was. No molecular gastronomy or deconstructed dishes here! Not that there’s anything wrong with those, as visitors to this blog know, but I love the idea of experiencing the cooking of early last century, and even the centuries before that.

So I took off from the Nebulas with Jaym Gates and Lee Whiteside and headed over to Big Jones, where we were joined by Chicago local Eden Robins, with whom I’ve been trying to share a meal for years. Well, it finally happened (as you can see above) and, as it turned out, in one of her favorite restaurants, too.

It took Big Jones to bring us together. (more…)