CHRISTINE CIKOWSKI
At Honey Butter Fried Chicken, Christine Cikowski serves a menu mindful of just how comforting food can be, especially when made with high-quality ingredients and many sourced from area farms and producers. Opening the restaurant in fall 2013 served as the culmination of several elements for Cikowski: putting her and Co-Chef/Owner Josh Kulp’s ideas into a brick-and-mortar restaurant; continuing the community they built around Sunday Dinner Club, which they’d founded in 2005; and creating a business at which they’d want to work, backed by business principles that embodied valuing employees. Cikowski has also vigorously supported other employees in their own endeavors, including starting some of their own businesses. (She and Kulp opened TriBecca’s Sandwich Shop in 2022 with their former sous chef and now business partner Becca Grothe).
She grew up with parents who loved to cook, bake, and garden, and had worked in restaurants since she was 16, but didn’t follow her passion for cooking until she was 27, enrolling in Kendall College School of Culinary Arts in Chicago. At culinary school, she became friends and later colleagues with Kulp, and the two of them began hatching plans for Sunday Dinner Club after reading a New York Times article on underground dining. Cikowski worked at Blackbird in Chicago for 20 months after graduating and consecutively launched Sunday Dinner Club. Her experience at the award-winning restaurant grafted onto her personal chef philosophies, from how to run businesses to cooking high-quality seasonal food and putting menus together.
Throughout the years, Cikowski, along with Kulp, garnered acclaim including a previous spot on Eater Chicago’s Essential 38 List, Jean Banchet “Chef of the Year” nominations, a Chicago Tribune Dining Award, Star Chefs Rising Star Chef, Good Food Chef of the Year award from Family Farmed. Additionally, Honey Butter Fried Chicken won both Chicago Tribune’s Reader’s Choice Award for Best Fried Chicken and Chicago Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Award for Best Fried Chicken. They launched a concession stand version of HBFC at the United Center in 2018, opened a second Honey Butter Fried Chicken location in Glencoe in 2024, and expanded the business with a DoorDash Kitchen partnership in Redwood City CA to bring a 6 monthpop up HBFC to the San Francisco Bay Area for take out and delivery.
Christine has worked closely on community initiatives with multiple local and national nonprofits to support and improve systems and culture in the restaurant industry, and beyond. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking at home, hiking and camping, and spending time with her very cute rescue dog Dusty.
