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• Thad Morrow’s return to the midwest

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Thad Morrow, executive chef of Bacaro, presents a plate of big eye tuna crudo with celery root salad and plum oil on December 13, 2007. (Steve Goodwine, Buzz photographer)

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Bacaro »
Address: 113 N. Walnut St. Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: (217) 398-6982
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Thad Morrow, the chef and owner of Bacaro Wine Lounge and Italian Restaurant, 113 N. Walnut St. in downtown Champaign, is a wide-shouldered, 35-year-old man with large, tattoo-covered arms. In the kitchen of his restaurant, he wears a white chef’s jacket over long, faded camouflage shorts and black clogs. His short-cropped hair, buzzed closely on the sides, is styled into a faux-hawk, which he runs his fingers through, making the hair stand on its ends. His style is rough-around-the-edges, and he is a quiet man with a long-nurtured appreciation for good food and good wine.

“My philosophy on food is kind of like my philosophy in life,” Morrow said. “You don’t need a hundred friends. You only really need three or four good ones. What really do you need in life besides a good bottle of wine, some bread and some cheese? You don’t need a bunch of things on your menu. Maybe just 10 things, but the ingredients in them are the best you can possibly buy. They don’t have to be expensive, and they don’t have to be complicated.”

Morrow was exposed to what would be the beginnings of his career in food while growing up in Jacksonville, Ill.

“My mom had a subscription to Bon Appetit; she loved to experiment with food,” he said.

When Morrow was 10, he began his own experimentation with food.

“I was into Jell-o,” he said. “Crazy Jell-o. Whipped Jell-o, layered Jell-o — I’d put it in the fridge slanted. After that, it was soft pretzels.”

Morrow wanted to be a baker but said one didn’t really go to cooking school back then. So he attended Indiana University for public policy and environmental science until he learned that the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., had begun to offer a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts. He left the university for the school that offered blocks of restaurant experience, alternating between courses on kitchen skills and classes such as “Intro to Hot Foods” and “Fish Kitchen.”

“They also had a wine course,” Morrow said, “which I aced, thank you very much.”

While attending the Institute, he interned at Pó, celebrity chef Mario Batali’s first restaurant in New York City.

“This is a little-known fact about my past,” he said. “I worked with Molto Mario. But this was way back before he was Molto — it was back when he was just a dude.”

While some critics look negatively on celebrity chefs for selling out to the media, Morrow appreciates what they have done for the food culture.

“People will bag on Emeril and Rachael Ray, but it’s people like these who really made the culinary arts explode,” he said. “Now you hear things like, ‘Oh, andouille sausage! I saw that on Food Network.’ Pure exposure is a great thing.

It all boils down to people having a good time and enjoying food.”

After graduating from the Institute, Morrow came to Champaign to manage Urbana’s Corkscrew Wine Emporium.

“I was going to go back and work for Molto in New York,” he said. “But I wanted to open a restaurant before I turned 30.” So Morrow opened Bacaro in November of 2001.

“It was supposed to be a wine bar, mainly, where you could get some wine and something to nibble on,” he said. “We’d play a little rock and roll. It wasn’t supposed to be a really fancy restaurant, but it evolved. You’re lucky when you can translate what you like to do into a career. It’s like I’m constantly going out to dinner —

I just don’t get to eat everything.”