70 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {food coloring} swarms of diners that descended before and after every show. Later, he helmed The Moody Tongue, the world's first brewery with two Michelin stars. Despite all the accolades, Jared is delightfully selfeffacing about it all. “Almost every job, I've just answered a Craigslist ad,” he grins. “I'm kinda like the Bill Murray of chefs in that way.” Weary of Chicago’s brutal winters, Jared decided it was time for a change. After some thought, he narrowed it down to two places: “It was Kyoto or Northern California.” Fortunately for Peninsulans, the West Coast won out. Visitors to Café Vivant can expect the heart of the concept to remain constant: “It's gonna consist of some chickens,” Jared says. But the menu will shift too. “The sauces will change, the presentations will change.” Several items will remain, but in different iterations. The savory seafood cannoli might shift from crab to lobster. The pâté may be rabbit one week and duck the next. “It'll be whatever animal gets in my way,” Jared jokes. His most playful appetizer will stick around: heritage chicken nuggets topped with crème fraîche, a sprig of dill and a dollop of Keluga caviar. Though in the future, Jared wants to serve these nuggets on dishes shaped like chicken claws. “I absolutely abhor having stuff that lives on menus for longer than two or three months,” Jared says. “I have to cook it every night. And after about the 16,000th time I've seen it, I don't wanna see it anymore.” Chicken may be the main attracAs forthright as his cooking, Jared doesn’t like to mince words. “I'm a difficult partner. I will tell people exactly what is on my mind. There is no internal voice up here. It just comes out,” he says. With almost 18 years of Michelin experience under his belt, he’s no stranger to scrutiny. “Nothing hurts my feelings … my skin is thicker than a dinosaur’s!” That said, he’s received countless glowing reviews for his original and audacious concepts. Take Dusek’s, a restaurant he helmed within a Romanesque Revival-style opera house (where Jared also lived for over a decade). “It was maybe the hardest restaurant I've ever done,” he says, recalling the
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