Iliana Regan

Iliana Regan (born in 1979) is a Michelin-star chef, restaurateur, and memoir author. She owned and ran the Chicago restaurant Elizabeth until 2020 when she left Chicago to run the Milkweed Inn bed and breakfast in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her 2019 memoir Burn the Place was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Quotes

The farmhouse was like a lot of farmhouses, I imagine. I was in love with that place. Everything about it was outrageously enchanting. It was in that house that I cooked my first chanterelles, gathered from my grandfather's farm. I stood on a footstool and stirred in the butter. My mom and I added salt and pepper. The earthy aroma filled my sense memory. I never forgot.
- Burn the Place: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2020. p. 5. ISBN 9781982157777. (256 pages; 1st edition published in 2019 by Agate Publishing in Evanston, Illinois)

My grandfather’s farm, 100 acres of corn fields, oaks, birch trees, ponds, abandoned cabins, sand, wild berries, and mushrooms, was nothing short of another universe full of magic. My dad’s father, George, was handsome and sweet. We drove up the side drive, past the house, and stopped just before the large barn and gate, which led back to the woods. The path to the woods was lined with wild blueberries and dewberries and sometimes if I was there on Sundays after the Lone Ranger episodes, I’d walk the trail and pick them into a small basket. Then I retreated back to the porch with the basket on my lap and ate every single one.
- pp. 24–25

FISHERMEN AND HUNTERS WELCOME. MICHIGAN CHERRIES. SUGAR BEETS AND CORN. The banner at the truck stop rotated with these simple phrases. ... The seasons out here were determined by there was to fish, hunt, forage, pick, and so on, you understand. Most people were hunters and fishermen and animals were their prey, which left the flora to people like me. ...
I liked truck stops. Sometimes I had cravings for that sort of meat and potatoes type of American cuisine you could find at a truck stop. Because I'm a fine-dining chef, people think I eat fancy most of the time. That is very far from the truth.
- "Chapter 2. Out Here". Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir. Agate Publishing. 2023. ISBN 9781572848696.

Summers were everything because I didn't have school, and I hated school. I wasn't good at like some other kids. And there were a lot of kids at school. I liked to keep to myself, so things like school or anything that brought kids together made things sort of difficult. It was a people thing. In the summer, I kept track of time by what we foraged, like mulberries, meadow mushrooms, boletus, chanterelles, hen of the woods, blueberries, and by event's like Mom's birthday, the Fourth of July, my birthday, the county fair.
- "Chapter 4. Meadow Mushrooms". Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir. Agate Publishing. 2023. ISBN 9781572848696.

“Burn the Place” is divided into three parts, focussing on Regan’s childhood, her alcoholism, and her present-day recovery and restaurant ownership. The sections are constructed of scraps and vignettes, fragmentary pieces of memory that hop around the time line, following their own ordinal logic. Regan’s recollections are concrete and achingly precise—she is particularly attuned to scent, conjuring wafts of decaying oak leaves revealed under thawing snow, the earthy, fungal funk of a sourdough starter, the sharp tang of a metal key bearing a bump of cocaine—but they break and flow with a dreamlike disorientation.
- Helen Rosner, (October 15, 2019) "“Burn the Place” Is a Thrilling, Disquieting Memoir of Addiction and Coming of Age". The New Yorker.

Traveling around the country gave her new perspective and a break from her everyday life of running a restaurant, which she emphasized was a 24-hour job that required her to not only create a menu, but to do the bookkeeping, run payroll and manage the staff. Regan, who grew up on a 10-acre farm in Indiana, said it helped her realize that she wanted to bring food to a table and incorporate a lifestyle element in her projects.
After months of searching, Regan found the location for Milkweed Inn in Nahma Township in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It’s near the Hiawatha National Forest and is surrounded by lush woods on multiple acres with a river running through it.
- Grace Wong, (February 21, 2019) "Elizabeth, Kitsune chef Iliana Regan and wife to open forest retreat in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula". Chicago Tribune.