The Kelly's Table Story

Growing up in a large family, our dining room was the center of our home—Kelly's Table, where we gathered nightly to share food, news and stories. It was also the scene of many dinner parties where my parents entertained in high style and took advantage of the free labor at their disposal to press us into service as waitresses, bus staff, cooks, and dishwashers.

A story from those days long past inspired the name for my restaurant. My “Kelly's Table” was created in a spirit of fond remembrance for those exciting parties where my love of food, entertaining, and sharing good times was born.

Kelly's Table

I have been asked by people who inhabit such gourmet eateries as Happy's Tavern or Butch's Supper Club to name my very favorite dining place. This is a compliment, since it implies that one has unfolded a napkin somewhere besides McDonald's and a few places in Paris. I have no hesitancy.

My favorite dining place was Kelly's Table…an exclusive, unpretentious place run by Tom and Audrey Kelly in Chicago. It was a warm and homey place; a euphoric combination of food and friendship. Its patrons were a sometimes weird but always compatible group of brilliant, intelligent people who had a sense of humor and used it.

At Kelly's Table, Tom was the Chef Supreme, the maitre d', the head cork popper. He had a fixation. He would pursue some remote butcher shop on the far-east side of Chicago to get a particular slab of aged filet or a select crop of shallots, mountain grown. He also picked up, in the process, a strange following of traffic cops. After the fourth of his dynamic martinis it was a question of which got done first...the dinner or his tragic tale about the dishonesty of the courts. Audrey, assisted by her youthful family helpers, did all the work.

Any attempt to recreate this domestic scene at Kelly's Table would be incomplete without the ultimate gustatorial gem...Tom's Cherries Jubilee. I have read many recipes for this exotic dessert; none even came close to the Kelly version.

It was apparent that ingredients were important. Tom would spend half a day getting the ice cream from a bakery run by two little old ladies on the west side of Waukegan. The cherries were hand-selected at a small but neat fruit stand at the southern end of Western Avenue; then washed and rinsed twice in soft water. The chafing dish was of Anaconda copper burnished with Bon Ami. At the last moment generous bowls of ice cream were brought from the kitchen.

The moment of truth was approaching. Oh, the magic of the moment! Standing back in a pose resembling Douglas Fairbanks and his fabled sword, Tom added the final touch to the chafing dish of sautéed cherries. No little quarter-cup of Cognac as the plebian recipe calls for, but just about enough to fill the crank case of a Mercedes. Without a moment's hesitation he scratched a kitchen match on the seat of his pants and touched the match to the mess.

I may be mixed up in my remembrance, but that second will always be timeless in my dreams. The ignition was not a bang or a boom, but rather like a muffled replica of the first A-bomb test at Alamogordo. The flames leapt up like a volcano in orgasm and left a black smudge on the ceiling, which, for all I know, is still in the old homestead.

Tom, my favorite man for many reasons, was unperturbed. When the heat subsided he spooned sixteen cherries and sixteen ounces of flaming cognac into the ice cream bowls and the beautiful Kelly daughters passed them around. Having never experienced a Kelly Cherries Jubilee, I ate the whole thing and spoke with a lisp for a week.

Excerpted from a letter by family friend– John Read Karel