This week we sat down with Graham Elliot Bowles of Avenues restaurant in Chicago’s Peninsula hotel. Chef Bowles has worked at some of the finest restaurants in the country including the Mansion on Turtle Creek, Charlie Trotters, Tru, and the Jackson House Inn. Chef Bowles earned a nod as one of Food and Wine’s best new chefs of 2004, and since coming aboard at Avenues restaurant, he has earned 4 stars from an assortment of food publications.

Our podcast (What is a Podcast?), turned into a jam session, with Chef Bowles riffing on music, food, art, and politics. We discussed why a chef has to leave his greatest hits behind, the wider accessibility of fine dining, how constraints actually breed creativity in cooking, and the chef’s tattoo collection.

If you have Macromedia Flash installed, you can play the file right on this site, below, by pressing the play button. If not, download the file and play it on your PC or on an MP3 player here: Graham Elliot Bowles Interview