The door to Feld hides in its nook on Chicago Avenue. You could miss it in a blink. For Caroline Schrope, however, it’s the center of her Chicago.

On a Thursday in June, at around 11:30 a.m., Schrope, 28, her curly brown hair in pigtails, looped a black apron over her head and wrote 13 things on her prep list. By noon, she had crossed out the first three. Schrope sliced Benton’s 14-month smoked ham into small cubes at her station at Feld, Jake Potashnick’s year-old tasting menu restaurant in Ukrainian Village.

At Le Bouchon’s grill station on a Monday at noon, Kurtis Kincaid, 26, cut fennel as he waited for the servers on the lunch shift to hand him order tickets. His apron was tied loosely around his waist, leaving exposed the logo on his Vans T-shirt. Le Bouchon has served traditional French food in Bucktown since 1993.

When you eat at a restaurant, you spend time with your server. Maybe you chat with the bartender, maybe you don’t, but you can usually see them mix your drink. The chef’s name is probably on your menu, if it’s not in the name of the restaurant itself.

But you can’t spend time with line cooks because their hands are full. Behind a swinging metal door, they slice, dice, saute, fry, grill, stir. They stand for hours. Most of the time, they start the day before anyone else in the restaurant and stay well into the night.

Line cooks don’t make a lot of money. They also don’t get a lot of respect for their craft: Chicago foodies don’t toss around their names in conversation or discuss their creativity; celebrity status does not exist for line cooks. 

But what’s a restaurant without them?

Monday lunch: Le Bouchon

“We’re at 20 minutes for a snail,” said Nicolas Poilevey. Kincaid nodded and grabbed the pair of tongs resting on the oven handle. He reached into another oven and retrieved the cast-iron snail dish. It wasn’t hot enough, so he lit a gasoline burner with a stick lighter and shoved the snail dish between the stove’s rails. When the butter bubbled, he transferred the cast iron onto a doily on a ceramic plate and then carried the appetizer to the table himself.

Usually, the escargot at Le Bouchon takes a handful of minutes: they’re prepped in the back with scoops of herb butter, so Kincaid just has to throw them in the oven during service. But the kitchen’s excitement distracted him, and Kincaid had left his first snail cooking for too long.

He took a swig of his soda, stuck a toothpick with a paper French flag through a fried crab sandwich and pushed the plate onto the pass. He picked up a brioche bun he had slightly over-toasted, used a knife to scrape the most burnt part off, and then filled it with sausage, pouring grease from the pan on top.

Le Bouchon line cook Kurtis Kincaid in the kitchen of the longtime Bucktown restaurant on Aug. 11, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

The servers working the lunch service appeared with tickets in spurts. While the board was slow, Kincaid sliced fennel, his left hand moving machine-like. He joked with the person working saute behind him.

“I’m closer to the people I work with than I am to most of my family,” Kincaid said. 

He has worked at Le Bouchon, on and off, for three years. Not a lifetime. Yet it has been more than enough time for his co-workers to see Kincaid at his worst and best, his drunkest and most sober moments, forcing down deepest frustration and cracking his funniest jokes. Three years, on and off, is hours and hours spent in too-close proximity, privy to one another’s mistakes, triumphs and growth. 

Kincaid towered like a beanstalk in Le Bouchon’s small kitchen. At 6-foot-5, he is the tallest of the restaurant’s staff and therefore in charge of cleaning the walk-in fridge’s ceiling.

Kincaid grew up in Ionia, Michigan. He used to hide under the kitchen table while his grandmothers cooked so he could learn from them.

At 15, he asked the mom-and-pop diner his family frequented for a job as a dishwasher. His next dishwashing job was where he met “actual cook personalities,” like the town drunk who threw plates at Kincaid if they weren’t clean.

When he was 17, Kincaid dropped out of school and moved in with his older brother. He got his first real cooking job at Applebee’s, where he learned how to do things like cooling food and taking its temperature along the way. Tickets rang in fast and frequently, so Kincaid learned how to cook and prep at the same time.

It prepared him for the family-owned restaurant Olivera’s, which fed close to 500 people nightly. He would take orders over the phone while making four different pasta dishes. But when it stopped feeling like cooking and more like throwing ingredients together, Kincaid moved to Chicago.

He found his way to Le Bouchon and Obelix, both owned by Oliver and Nicolas Poilevey. When Kincaid was at Obelix, he was drinking too much, showing up hungover and making his co-workers’ lives hard. He quit to get a hold of himself.

Kincaid has finally settled into a stable routine at Le Bouchon. He works a double on Mondays and the morning shift Tuesdays through Fridays, so his schedule is almost in line with his girlfriend’s traditional 9 to 5 job.

For a few weeks, Kincaid thought he would return to school, earn a degree and seek a white-collar job. One that didn’t mean 14-hour shifts on his feet, one with paid time off and office happy hours. He is serious about his girlfriend and wants the opportunity to build a life with her. He also hasn’t been to a doctor in eight years and doesn’t have a credit card.

But Kincaid realized the restaurant life was his life, one he had embraced not because he stumbled upon it but because he chose it. And at what other job would the entire crew get matching wine cork tattoos?

“There’s always going to be soul in food,” Kincaid said.

Thursday prep: Feld

Schrope dropped ham cubes in a pot with water. She was making a version of dashi, a clear broth usually prepared with fish or kelp. While the pot heated up on the stove, she brought dirty pans, used to cook chicken bones for stock, to the dish pit.

Schrope spent the next eight minutes scraping chicken fat off pans with the vigor of someone eager to scratch the numbers off a lottery ticket. She added the extra fat to her stock and left almost-clean pans soaking in the sink. She would almost certainly be back after service to help in the dish pit.

“Everyone kind of has their thing,” Schrope said. “The dish pit is my thing.”

Feld line cook Caroline Schrope makes rounds of blanched spinach on June 19, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Schrope grew up in Melbourne, Florida, in a family where food mattered. Her father traveled frequently for work and would bring food back from the places he visited. Her grandmother wrote her own cookbook; her uncle owned a restaurant.

Schrope earned a degree in graphic design from Palm Beach Atlantic University. She wanted to create art, but this degree, she was told, would set her up for a career.

She never found out if that was true. In 2020, Schrope moved to Nashville. She helped open a bar where she worked with her best friend, focusing on herbalism in the drinks she created. She started bartending at Margot, a small restaurant that has been around for nearly a quarter century. In 2022, the kitchen needed extra hands; Schrope offered hers. Before she knew it, she was a line cook.

“I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she said of her younger self.

Schrope started as garde manger but quickly learned the grill station. At Margot, the menu featured produce from farmers with whom the executive chef and owner, Margot McCormack, had connections, a similar ideology to the one that fuels cooking at Feld.

Schrope had never been to Chicago when she applied to Feld in 2024. Her kitchen experience was limited, but Potashnick was looking for cooks who understood the front of the house as well as the back; the cooks at Feld are also servers, runners and bussers.

It took just one phone interview for Potashnick to hire Schrope. She found the closest apartment she could to Feld and moved to the Windy City.

Feld was certainly an adjustment for Schrope — it still is. She is the least experienced cook at the Michelin guide restaurant. She compensates with a humility that doesn’t exist in many old-school kitchen environments, absorbing knowledge like a sponge. Everyone in the kitchen calls her “Carol.”

Potashnick says his restaurant is “relationship to table.” He buys all of his ingredients from farmers or fishermen he knows and trusts. The tiny Feld staff — four cooks, a general manager-slash-wine director and a front-of-house coordinator — has bought into their chef’s approach to running his restaurant. 

Almost dinner service: Le Bouchon

Kincaid rolled his eyes. It was getting on 5 o’clock and the garde manger station wasn’t set up; the cook working lunch service had left nine pans half-empty, quart containers only partially prepared.

He walked into the back, mumbling in frustration. But his mood changed like the wind.

Le Bouchon line cook Kurtis Kincaid peers into the restaurant from the kitchen on Aug. 11, 2025. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

While Kincaid restocked his station, he chatted playfully with the chef de cuisine. Henry Zimmerman, who wears gold, feather-shaped earrings, is the first chef Kincaid said he ever truly respected — because of his friendliness. He doesn’t yell or scream, but when Kincaid disappoints Zimmerman, he knows it.

“It’s like letting down your dad,” Kincaid said.

When he started at Le Bouchon, Kincaid told Zimmerman he wanted to learn how to make pasta. Zimmerman sent him to the basement prep area every day for a month until his dough was perfect.

Zimmerman likes that Kincaid is “a learning cook that wants to learn.” 

“He’s interested in and excited about food,” he said.

Almost dinner service: Feld

By 5 p.m., the staff had changed into blue button-down shirts. Potashnick went through everyone on the reservation list as if he were a detective. Josh, for example, had eaten at Feld once before. He used to be in the Air Force. He might be left-handed, but the team needed to watch him to confirm that.

The meeting adjourned. Schrope had less than an hour before Potashnick’s sauce tasting at 6 p.m. sharp.

Line cook Caroline Schrope puts together a banh mi sandwich during the staff meal at Feld on June 19, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Just minutes remained when the rose petal beurre monté sauce broke for the second time. Schrope dropped a butter-covered whisk on the clean counter, making her first and only mess of the day. She grabbed the immersion blender and more tempered butter and attempted to coax the sauce back to life. It wasn’t quite right. Exasperation was already creeping over her face when she knocked the whisk into the trash can.

The clock hit 6:01. Alex Felix said something quietly, but Schrope didn’t respond; she was laser-focused. She added butter, put the pan on the heat, took it off, added water. Amid the beurre monté frenzy, Schrope dipped a finger in another sauce for a taste.

“Cool,” she mumbled. The green sauce was all wrong — the cream had spoiled.

Finally, by 6:12, Schrope was ready for inspection. Potashnick sampled each of her creations. The ham dashi and the beurre monté needed salt, but the regular dashi was good. The caramelized onion jam was too thick; Potashnick added water. He loved the strawberry tea she made out of Felix’s scraps.

“That’s really good,” he told her. “You should do that a lot.”

Dinner: Le Bouchon

“Rojo, bread?” 

The front-of-house expo indicated the empty bread basket sitting on the pass. Kincaid — or Rojo, for his red hair — mumbled a curse and opened the oven. The baguettes were brown.

He apologized, threw the bread on the speed rack and slid in a fresh tray.

“Mr. Chocolate Bread,” Zimmerman called him.

It was the same mistake he had made in the morning with the escargot. Kincaid has a firm understanding of every dish on Le Bouchon’s menu; he has worked every station and can handle the heat of a busy Friday night with ease. During a hectic service, Kincaid finds that his unmedicated ADHD helps him handle the chaos. He says everything, really, is as simple as onion soup.

In slower moments, however — like the lag on an unsteady Monday — Kincaid’s mind wanders too easily, and baguettes burn.

Dinner: Feld

“Doors!” called Potashnick. At 6:40, the Feld team crowded the restaurant entrance. A spotlight shone down on every countertop in the dining room.

“It’s begun,” someone sighed.

The sauce broke for the third time. Schrope was plating strawberries with fennel greens, fennel jam, fennel emulsion and chamomile milk, a dish she had pitched. She kept her focus there until the dish hit the tables, then hurried to resume battle with the beurre monté.

“Bitchass sauce,” she muttered.

Cooks Caroline Schrope, from left, Austin Klawitter and Alex Felix work in the kitchen at Feld on June 19, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Felix and Potashnick joined Schrope behind the pass and in a few moments, xantham gum and colder butter fixed sauce-gate No. 3. Schrope had a speck of it splattered in her hair, but the rest of the sauce went with the tiny mackerel. Schrope delivered dishes to a table, talking with her hands.

The energy in the restaurant cooled after quail service, the evening’s final savory dish. Bob Dylan asked the room “How does it feel?” as he crooned from Feld’s speakers. Schrope, who worked pastry before she was saucier, helped with dessert, arranging perfect pairs of red cherries on blue and white plates.

When it was over, the cooks shared the extra quail.

“I know you’re already beating yourself up about this,” Potashnick said quietly to Schrope. He wasn’t angry, but wished she had asked for help earlier.

She hadn’t because she didn’t want him to know the sauce had broken again. She wanted to fix it by herself.

“People make beurre monté without xanthan all the time, so why can’t I do it?” Schrope said. “I’m gonna go home and watch YouTube videos.”

On a farm

The restaurant industry is changing. Back-of-house workers are asking for benefits and consecutive days off. At Feld, the staff has a four-day workweek; at Le Bouchon, Kincaid gets his weekends and nights off. 

Chefs are kinder, offering patience and even friendship to their employees rather than the fierce intimidation often associated with the industry’s stars.

Both Schrope and Kincaid have a say in the menus at their respective restaurants. Kincaid pitched the bouillabaisse sausage dish that Le Bouchon offers. Every Tuesday, Potashnick hosts a video call where his cooks suggest menu items.

The week of the broken beurre monté sauce, Potashnick drove with his cooks to Kankakee Valley Homestead in Walkerton, Indiana. He believes that people who handle food should know, intimately, where it comes from.

Schrope sat in a green wire tent with the other cooks that Monday. For once, the people she describes as the loudest she has ever met were silent.

Blood ran over Schrope’s hands. One held a pair of scissors; the other clenched a headless quail. She let the small bird bleed out, then dipped it in a bucket of hot water before placing it on ice. She carefully picked the feathers off, rinsed the bird again. Then she took out its intestines and its heart and then finally returned the quail’s body to the ice.

When it was done, Schrope wandered off alone, crouching in her camouflage overalls as she foraged among the farm’s wild plants. She mulled over the 47 quails she had helped slaughter (the 48th had flown out of her hands). It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. At least she was surrounded by a group that, to her, feels like family.

“What we’re doing with food is a philosophical thing,” she said. “Food is everything, it is community … our lives are centered around food.”

Cooks Alex Felix, left, and Caroline Schrope laugh together during the staff meal at Feld on June 19, 2025. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

In her year at Feld, Schrope has thrived. She loves her job, her co-workers, how her work and life have blended. Being the only woman in the kitchen doesn’t bother her. She’s happy, even though it’s a demanding, often draining, lifestyle. Even with her four-day workweek, she fears eventual burnout.

One day, Schrope dreams of owning her own place — a tea house by day, with a tasting menu dinner service once or twice a week.

Kincaid’s dream is simpler: “Be happy. Stable. Mentally healthy.”

Like all line cooks, he loves a challenge.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/02/chicago-line-cook-profiles/