Mike Sheerin

Chef de Cuisine Blackbird

As Blackbird’s first Chef de Cuisine, Mike Sheerin steps up to the stoves of one of Chicago’s most beloved and respected restaurants. To watch his easy manner and quiet confidence, one wouldn’t know that this chef has taken on such a responsibility and is now being closely watched by a curious culinary community. Sheerin’s cuisine is a delicate departure from that of Executive Chef Paul Kahan, and yet he carries on Kahan’s uncanny ability to make quietly revolutionary food.

Recently, Sheerin shook up the menu with disarmingly pedestrian ingredients, such as garnishing parsnip soup with puffed rice (simply fried in oil and seasoned), as well head-turning preparations, such as his delicious bacon caramel and smoked grapes with venison, and a crisply bitter radicchio sauce with pike. His fried shallot broth, served with lamb and butternut squash panisse, riffs on traditional preparations in a most modern way.

Sheerin comes to Blackbird from Kahan’s friend Wylie Dufresne and WD-50, where he worked as sous chef for 3 1/2 years. Prior to his time at WD-50, Sheerin worked at Lutece, Atlas and Jean-Georges in New York. In his Chicago hometown, he worked at Everest.

Sheerin has a Bachelor of Culinary Arts from Grand Rapids Community College.