François de Mélogue grew up in a very French household in Chicago. His earliest attempts at cookery began with the filleting of his sister’s goldfish at age two and a braised rabbit dish made with his pet rabbits by age seven. He eventually stopped cooking his pets and went to the highly esteemed New England Culinary Institute, where he graduated top of his class in 1985. Over the next three decades he cooked in a number of highly acclaimed kitchens across the country, including Chef Louis Szathmáry’s The Bakery in Chicago, Old Drovers Inn, a Relais & Châteaux property in New York, and Joël Robuchon’s restaurant Gastronomie in Paris, before opening Pili Pili, his wood-fired Mediterranean restaurant in Chicago. In 2003, Food & Wine named Pili Pili one of the ten best new restaurants in the world.
Today, François lives in St Albans, Vermont, with his wife Lisa and their son Beau, the self-proclaimed family saucier. At heart, he is a storyteller who works in two mediums, food and light. In the kitchen, his stories unfold in slowly simmered daubes and simple, thoughtfully crafted dishes that express their seasonality in every bite. With a camera, they become quiet images of food, honest products, and the rural landscapes of Vermont and Provence. He is the author of French Cooking for Beginners: 75+ Classic Recipes to Cook Like a Parisian, a book that wanders well beyond Paris into the markets and kitchens of France. You can explore his photographic work at https://www.francoisdemelogue.com/ and follow his Provençal-flavored writings on Medium in his column Pistou and Pastis.
