Cuisine à la Nahabedian Carrie Nahabedian returns to Chicago with a nick-namesake in Gordon's former home By Nancy Ross Ryan

When most chefs reach the point (generally regarded as the pinnacle) where they can open their own restaurant, many put their reputations (and, yes, their egos) on the line and they name it after themselves. Very few nickname it after themselves. When Chef Carrie Nahabedian opens her restaurant this fall in the space occupied for so many years by Gordon, the namesake restaurant of Gordon Sinclair, she will name it Naha. "That was my uncle's, my father's, my -- my whole family's nickname -- for years. No one could say, much less spell Nahabedian. When my cousin Michael was on the school football team, his jersey read 'Naha,' " says Carrie. What's in a name? This nickname is jam packed: family, food, decor, ambiance and style. For starters, Carrie's cousin Michael Nahabedian, himself a restaurateur (Green Dolphin Street and Cafe Absinthe), is the restaurant's director of operations. His brother Tom Nahabedian, an architect with a Beverly Hills design firm, is charged with complete remodeling and redesign of the former Gordon space. And Carrie is in charge of the food. Her food begins with family. "I come from a large, loving family, still very close today. We were lucky to have my grandmother not only with us when we were growing up, but we had her for most of our adult lives. Her grandchildren and her great grandchildren knew her." Grandmother was the cook whose skills were mythical, but whose food was down to earth. "When she and my grandfather -- they were married for 50 years -- came to this country they brought the traditional Armenian village food. She made her own filo dough until my grandfather died -- making filo takes two." When Carrie was in high school, she did well academically, but "I knew I didn't want to go to college. I knew that whatever I did in life, it would have to be hands-on, creative -- not from my head alone." She was accepted at a university, but decided instead to apply to the Culinary Institute of America. She was accepted, but when she eyed the curriculum, she decided against that, too. "I already knew from home how to make bread, braise, roast -- I saw all the cooking techniques except perhaps demi-glace at home. I didn't need to go to school for the basics." Then her father's carpet (call it magic) took her to the Ritz. Her father had a contract for carpeting at the Ritz and, through friends, got her a part time job there when she was 17. "It was the greatest thing that had happened to Chicago dining at that time. Incredible numbers of chefs from all over the world visited, passed through and cooked in that kitchen. I worked all the stations -- grill, entremetier, fish, saucier." I was wildly inquisitive and the chef noticed and rewarded me for it -- with work." She was barely 17 and still in high school and she was working six days a week in the Ritz kitchen -- and making $300 a week. "My teachers were really worried, but it went very well, no problems." Carrie formed lifelong friendships with her comrades at the Ritz, a pattern of strong, supportive relationships that she forged in all of her successive jobs -- with one possible exception: the job that she and several of her co-workers from the Ritz accepted in Atlantic City to work in a resort-hotel there, the first casino to open outside Las Vegas. "That was 21 years ago, we cooked for 10,000 people a day in an environment that caused us culture shock. There were 350 people working in the kitchen and one guy just cracked eggs all day long. That was his job, but I and my friends realized that this was not the job for us." After six months there -- time not wasted because they all went to dine in Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. -- she returned to Chicago to work at Le Perroquet. She had just turned 20. Her next move was to travel -- all over France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Greece and Egypt. "I spent every dime on eating. I remember my friend and I taking the train to Vienne, France to dine at La Pyramide. We changed clothes in the train station." When she returned from her world tour, she had two ambitions: to work at Le Français ("I had enough faith in myself,"), and to pay off her American Express card ("I had charged all my meals.") But then Jean Banchet closed for the whole month of January. "So he did this wonderfully generous thing. He hired me for February at Le Français and got me a job with his friend at Ciel Bleu in Chicago. Banchet asked me, 'How much do you need?' I told him what I needed to pay off my Amex. And that was what I was paid." She worked for two years at Le Français, forging friendships she still keeps, then realized that, although she was versed in French cuisine, "I didn't know how to make a gumbo, or beer batter -- in short American regional cooking." "I had met Gordon Sinclair at Leslie Reis's Cafe Provençal in Evanston. I learned he was opening an American restaurant -- Sinclair's -- in Lake Forest. So I got a job there working for Norman Van Aken as sous chef. And we hired Suzy Crofton, and Charlie Trotter. And again, we forged this wonderful team, and Norman and I will be friends forever." After Sinclair's came a stint as sous chef for three years at La Tour, the ground breaking French restaurant in the former Park Hyatt hotel. After three years she was offered a job as executive chef in the company. "But I never chased after money and I was always true to my craft. I wanted to work at the best places, work hard and learn." Her prayers for hard work were once again answered by the kitchen god. Her next job was as chef at the Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara. "This was a career-altering position," she says. "Fresh vegetables outside my door, squab raised by a guy down the road. I didn't know if I was working or on vacation, because the lifestyle and the community consumed you." It was good preparation for her next step: executive chef at the Four Seasons Los Angeles, reopening after a two-year renovation. "That was a whole other ball of wax. The community was movie, music and advertising people, and there were six other luxury hotels within a mile's distance. We had to be leaders. It kept me on my toes. There was no comfort zone for more than two days. I had to come up with a new dish, a new platter, a new way to cut melon, new produce -- we changed the menus sometimes every day, a least three times a week. I stayed there for five years, my longest personal commitment." Her cousin Michael had approached her to come to Chicago and open a restaurant, but in 1999 "We were deep in the millennium process. We had great reviews, great clientele. And I had made the commitment to do menus for the year 2000. I wanted to have one last great year, no holds barred, and also brings some chefs up to the next level -- those chefs were like sponges, they soaked up everything they saw, everything I could teach them and then some."So Carrie stayed until the new millennium. When Michael called her with the news that Gordon was retiring, that the space was available, "At first I didn't want to follow in his footsteps in that space. But Tom said, 'The only way is, with all due respect to Gordon, to take everything out and start over.' " And so it was begun: a new facade lets light into a room once romantically shadowed, and contemporary wood, concrete, linen and silk replace Oriental rugs, overstuffed velvet pillows, and floor-to-ceiling draperies. And, says Carrie, "You can come in dressed up, dressed down, have dinner or eat at the bar." She's still working on the menu which will be "New American cuisine with influences of the Mediterranean. I don't want to get labeled as California cuisine." When Naha opens in late August for dinner (for lunch in October), it has the blessings of Gordon Sinclair. "Gordon told me, 'I hope it has good karma in spades and I hope you are as fortunate here as I was.' " Is she concerned about the competition -- within less than a mile there is Spago, Zinfandel, Brasserie Jo and the biggest 600-pound gorilla of them all, Frontera Grill? "Nah," says Carrie, "People will always know where I am -- right across from Frontera." Rick Bayless, chef-owner of Frontera, quips, "I know just how she feels. When we first opened, we always told people, 'We're right across from Gordon.' "