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Celebrating Rob Levitt's Well-Earned Move Up To Publican Executive Chef
- Bob Benenson
- Jul 14
- 3 min read
Culinary Creator, Butcher Extraordinaire, and a Longtime Friend
I'm always pleased when I see someone who has elevated Chicago's food culture get justly rewarded. I'm even more pleased when the person getting rewarded for their excellent and hard work is a longtime friend.
So I can say I was downright thrilled when the Eater Chicago publication broke the news this past Friday that Rob Levitt has been named executive chef at The Publican — the flagship restaurant of the renowned One Off Hospitality Group.
Rob is stepping up from his six-year role as head butcher and chef de cuisine at Publican Quality Meats, a meat-centric shop and cafe located just across Green St. in the restaurant row in Chicago's Fulton Market District.
Rob told Ashok Selvam, regional editor of Eater Chicago, that this is a "full circle moment" for him, as he staged at One Off Hospitality's Avec and Blackbird restaurants when he was starting out. (Staging is essentially an unpaid internship in which aspiring chefs work to gain skills while impressing with their culinary acumen.)
But this is hardly the first time that Rob has been the one in charge of a big restaurant kitchen. He and his wife Allison, a pastry chef, opened Mado in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood in 2008.
Mado received plaudits for the creativity of its menu, including rave reviews from the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. But they left in 2010, with hints of conflict with a business partner (the restaurant abruptly closed later that year). In 2011 (a few months before Barb and I moved to Chicago) they opened Butcher and Larder, a whole animal butcher shop in Chicago's West Town neighborhood.
This was where I met Rob in 2015, when I was just getting established in my second career as a local food writer and advocate. I visited Butcher and Larder to interview him to help promote a master class he was to present at the Good Food Expo, produced by the non-profit FamilyFarmed (my then-employer). Rob became a regular presenter at that annual event over the next few years.
Later in 2015, Rob and his Butcher and Larder joined the startup team at Chicago's Local Foods, an ambitious attempt at a grocery store dedicated to selling mostly locally produced food. I became a regular shopper, and I learned more about meat from Rob than I think I'd known my entire previous life. He also disabused me of the urban legend that searing meat at the start of cooking seals in its juices, something I was told in a long-earlier cooking class.
Unfortunately, Local Foods ran into financial problems that impinged on Rob's work (it ended up closing in 2023). So when Paul Kahan, co-founder and executive chef of One Off Hospitality, contacted him in 2019 to explore his interest in taking over the kitchen at Publican Quality Meats, Rob leapt at the opportunity.
If you are a very close watcher of The Bear, the Hulu series about a tumultuous Chicago restaurant, you have seen Rob. He played himself giving Chef Sydney a lesson in meat cutting in Season 2's episode 3.
His working relationship with Paul Kahan — a farm to table pioneer and 2013 recipient of the James Beard Foundation Award as the nation's best chef — has grown over their six years on the One Off team. According to Eater, "He’s particularly fond of his interactions with Kahan, who will text him when he’s excited to see how a specific ingredient would look on the Publican’s menu. 'It’s the most amazing feeling to get a text message from Paul Kahan that says, ‘hey, garlic scapes are in season, we should buy a bunch,' Levitt says."
Rob didn't start out on a chef track; his major at University of Illinois-Champaign was Jazz Performance. So I guess it would be appropriate to wish him the best of success in his new role... and all that jazz.
See you soon at The Publican.
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