Chris Pandel

The Path

Formal technique came first. Training at Johnson & Wales University in Providence gave Chris Pandel the base before Chicago supplied the rooms, pace, and regulars. The Bristol in Bucktown, Chicago, became an early defining platform from 2008, where the cooking was direct, ingredient-minded, and measured rather than decorative. Neighborhood restaurants, Italian-inflected hospitality, and steakhouse service each require a different kind of control. As chef at Balena in Lincoln Park, Chicago, and chef at Swift & Sons in Chicago, Pandel worked across those formats without treating polish and approachability as opposites. The through line was structure: food built cleanly enough for the room, but not stripped of warmth. Range is now part of the job description. As chef of Boka Restaurant Group and chef of Moonlark’s Dinette (since 2023), Pandel works across formats and expectations rather than a single house style. The career reads as accumulated service knowledge: rooms, guests, menus, and pressures, each sharpening how personal cooking can still function inside contemporary American dining.

The Work Today

Multi-site cooking depends on repeatable standards as much as ideas. Pandel’s current Chicago roles include Executive Chef at Swift & Sons, Chef Partner and chef with Boka Restaurant Group, Executive Chef at Swift Tavern, Executive Chef at Cira, and Chef Partner at Zarella. The steakhouse format at Swift & Sons is treated as both inheritance and working brief. High-quality, locally sourced ingredients and classic culinary techniques are applied to reinvented steakhouse classics, vegetarian dishes, and seasonal sides. The expected signals remain—occasion, abundance, polish—but the menu gives attention beyond the center of the plate. A side can carry seasonality; a vegetarian dish is not handled as an afterthought; a classic is adjusted without losing its reason for being there. Recognition for a single dish can mark how a kitchen enters a city’s memory. The Swift & Sons Beef Wellington was named by Chicago Magazine in 2017 as one of 66 reasons Why We Love Chicago. The dish sits in a register Pandel often uses: ceremony kept under control, familiarity sharpened rather than overwritten. Modern Mediterranean cooking at Cira changes the vocabulary while keeping the same discipline. The menu draws from countries around the Mediterranean, including Turkish, Israeli, Syrian, and North African influences. Pandel has also been chef at Moonlark’s Dinette in Los Angeles, carrying the work into another dining landscape while keeping it connected to the broader point of view established across his Chicago kitchens.

Signature

Signature dishes such as Beef Wellington, dill monkey bread, Pistachio Ravioli, Crispy Duck Rice, and Brown butter hummus show a kitchen working across registers: steakhouse ceremony, bread service, filled pasta, crisp texture, and a spread built on browned fat. In Chris Pandel’s hands, richness is balanced by contrast—texture against tenderness, warmth against brightness, and technique used to support appetite rather than call attention to itself.

In Their Words “Why not make it personal, and do it the right way?”

Acclaim

Chris Pandel has received Jean Banchet Awards — Chef of the Year (2016). Peer recognition has included Chef of the Year (2016), placing Chris Pandel’s work within the Chicago dining record as a chef whose craft has moved between neighborhood service, group leadership, and the steakhouse form.