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at Taste of Chicago in 2004
| Joel Nickson Chef/Owner
Born in Roswell, NM, Joel grew up in North Carolina and northern New Jersey, where, at 16 running away from home, he first encountered kitchen work at a soul food restaurant in Harlem called Pauline's Passion Pit. From there, he received a very different education from the renowned Culinary Institute of America (where Tony Bourdain was a classmate) and a series of kitchen posts taking him from Ernie's (featured in Vertigo) in San Francisco to La Tulipe in Greenwich Village and La Quinta in Palm Desert, among others in Phoenix, Denver, Chapel Hill, and Miami. Prompted by his brothers to open his own restaurant in Chicago, Joel landed in the Windy City from Wilmington, NC and within eighteen months (and considerable sweat equity) the first Wishbone opened at 1800 W. Grand Avenue in the summer of 1990. Joel moved recently from Humboldt Park to Oak Park with his wife, Julie, and their two sons, Tyler and Clay, and daughter, Delia in anticipation of another Wishbone opening in Berwyn in late February 2007.
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| Guy Nickson Oracle/Owner
Drafted by brother Joel to assist in the opening of the first Wishbone, Guy had no previous restaurant experience. His background is in the arts and writing--having written scripts for film and theater; worked in not-for-profit arts organizations; taught at Columbia College and managed a solar heating development project. His work and studies have taken him from Chapel Hill, NC to NYU in Manhattan, with Paris, Albuquerque, Pittsburgh and San Francisco in between. He is very glad to have landed in Chicago the past 20 years and now lives with his wife, Claudia and two sons, Daniel and Brent.
A special pleasure is talking with the "philosophes" and readers who find their way to Wishbone's counters and are now part of the 'Bone's "counter culture." It beats blogs and LCD gazing ... and barbershops are clearly not an option..
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