Iliana Regan

A memoir chronicling Iliana Regan's journey from foraging on the family farm to running her Michelin-starred restaurant, Elizabeth, in Chicago

A Memoir

Burn the Place

Nick Gracilla

I live in Chicago. The Michelin-starred restaurant Elizabeth is a local hero; I celebrated an anniversary at Kitsune. Had I read the book reviews before diving in, I would have realized this is not so much a culinary memoir as it is one woman’s struggle with drugs, alcohol, and her sexual and personal identity. 

As a lesbian coming-of-age story for folks in and around “The Industry,” it is frank and sincere in capturing a moment in Chicago’s history. I lived, apparently, just down the street from Regan. I ate at the restaurants she worked in (and walked out of) in Andersonville. In summer, my friends and I would grab burgers and cheap liter steins of beer at T’s patio and watch the drunk lesbians fight on sidewalk. So the backstory she provides made perfect sense to me. 

As a story of recovery, there’s a vital hopefulness in this book. Regan suggests threads of obsessive compulsive behavior in herself and her family, but she makes good use of it in transforming her questions (how do ice cream stabilizers work?) and interests (wild gathering, fermenting, bread making) into her profession, first through underground dinners, then popups, then her restaurants. Side projects really can save one’s life. 

I do wish a stronger editor’s pen had tightened up the often overly conversational, sloppy writing.

Brooks Bradley Leete

LONGLISTED for the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A “blistering yet tender” (Publishers Weekly) memoir that chronicles one chef’s journey from foraging on her family’s Midwestern farm to running her own Michelin-starred restaurant and finding her place in the world. Iliana Regan grew up the youngest of four headstrong girls on a small farm in Indiana. While gathering raspberries as a toddler, Regan learned to only pick the ripe fruit. In the nearby fields, the orange flutes of chanterelle mushrooms beckoned her while they eluded others. Regan’s profound connection with food and the earth began in childhood, but connecting with people was more difficult. She grew up gay in an intolerant community, was an alcoholic before she turned twenty, and struggled to find her voice as a woman working in an industry dominated by men. But food helped her navigate the world around her—learning to cook in her childhood home, getting her first restaurant job at age fifteen, teaching herself cutting-edge cuisine while hosting an underground supper club, and working her way from front-of-house staff to running her own kitchen. Regan’s culinary talent is based on instinct, memory, and an almost otherworldly connection to ingredients, and her writing comes from the same place. Raw, filled with startling imagery and told with uncommon emotional power, Burn the Place takes us from Regan’s childhood farmhouse kitchen to the country’s most elite restaurants in a galvanizing tale that is entirely original, and unforgettable.

Burn the Place A Memoir

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