Rick Bayless’ Garden Tour

Nothing less than fabulous, as are all things Rick Bayless.
I found about the garden tour on Unilocal while looking for Chicago things that I have not done before. So grateful that I found this. It helps that I am into gardening, love Mexico One Plate at a Time and have a deep respect for all things Rick Bayless.
For $ 20 per person, you get to spend an hour or so learning all about the production garden at la Casa de Bayless. Jim Shores, the mastermind and small space garden specialist is very knowledgeable and has a great sense of humor. I walked away far more educated than when I walked in. And he will let you randomly sample what’s growing, like various letuces and berries.
They only have a few tours each year, best to get on the list as early in the year as possible. The garden is in production 9 months of the year, so if they have the tour, you will see lots of stuff. You can take pictures.
I scored street parking but that is not guaranteed. It is walkable from the Blue Line.

If you’re a fan of seeing where famous food people live and where tasty, local food comes from… or if you happen to enjoy meticulously groomed gardens and the most incredibly of backyards… then this tour is for you.
The tour is guided by the head gardener. He’s very dry but he brings in random bits of humor.
Shared bubbly juices are available as a touring sipping snack.
I’ve gone twice and both times have been enjoyable (despite the last visit being in the pouring rain).
I’m a fan of seeing where food comes from and I enjoy going with the optimistic thought that I might see Rick Bayless come out of his house (it hasn’t happened yet).
The tour lasts about an hour. You can try a green or 3 and the tour guide will answer most any question. It’s a good way to spend an idle Wednesday evening in the summer in Chicago.

My Husband and I came to Chicago for our 1 year anniversary. We bought tickets for a special garden+home tour and a 5 course dinner by Mr. Bayless himself. The tickets came with a 1 night stay at The Blackstone hotel, a signed book and breakfast the next morning. It was amazing! We paid about $ 400 total! What a DEAL (the hotel alone would be that much)!!! I think the garden is open to the public multiple times a year for $ 20, but the tour and dinner event is only 1 or 2 times per year. It was such a great experience! Search on google for tickets. We got lucky and our credit card company offered us this amazing deal (Chase Marriott Rewards Card). It was so much fun! Mezcal margaritas galore and the most amazing Mexican inspired bites. We learned about their sustainable organic garden and then Rick was there to show us a cooking demo in his kitchen. After that, the Bus took us to Xoco for the fanciest meal of our lives! So much beautiful yummy food and fun people! They were all so nice and made sure you were having fun the whole night! A+++++ And you know what made it even better… all the proceeds raised through our tickets were donated to Frontera Farmer Foundation that helps sustainable farms serving the Chicago area by providing them with capital development grants. Very Cool.

Here is my formal 5-​step introduction of Rick Bayless:
1. Rick Bayless is a genius.
2. He has six restaurants, mostly in Illinois. Frontera Grill, Topolobampo and XOCO are three of them.
3. His show, on PBS, «Mexico: One Plate at a Time» is very earnest and detailed. He travels often to his favorite spots in Mexico and then comes back to his house (WHICH I WAS JUST AT, YOU GUYS… see below) to cook a variation or a copy of the dish he ate or loves from that area of Mexico.
4. He makes my favorite salsa of all time: Frontera Salsa Hot Roasted Habanero.
5. His brother is Skip Bayless from ESPN’s «First Take». Two very successful brothers in one family. Nice job, Mom and Dad Bayless! Now, my husband watches «First Take» EVERY MORNING, which I call «Sports Shouting» because of 30 Rock. (Tina Fey is a GENIUS.) In summary, we are big fans of the whole Bayless clan.
ANYWAY, I heard that you could take a tour of the garden that supplies some food and herbs for his restaurants. Doing a very quick google search, I found that YES you can tour the garden for $ 20, but that it is THE garden behind his house where he also films the «Mexico: One Plate at a Time» show. Done and done. I signed up immediately. Although, usually, you have to wait to do the tour. A LONG TIME. Some people who signed up last year just recently got into the garden tour. I signed up months ago and just squeaked into the last Wednesday tour of the season that happened last night. Coincidentally, my husband happened to make reservations at Topolobampo for this Friday. How serendipitous is that?!?
Bill Shores and his wife, Lori, run the tour. Bill has been Bayless’ gardener for five years. They opened the garden gate about 10 minutes early and gave us Italian Soda while they encouraged us to walk around. Everyone seemed as excited as I was to be there. Gently touching leaves, awkwardly holding our tiny glasses of Italian Soda… you know, the things one is known to do in a garden.
The garden is beautiful, but it is also USED. It is a festive, eye-​catching garden that Bill describes as «a show garden that is also productive». There are traditional and raised beds with other small and large containers around. Some of the growth is 15 years old, like the concord grapes on the arbor. Ok, I have never typed anything like «concord grapes on the arbor» before. I had a stuffy English accent in my head when I typed it. Although, this arbor isn’t stuffy at all. It’s just sometimes word combinations have their own personalities and head-​accents are quick to follow.
Obviously, there is an extensive outdoor kitchen. It has charcoal, gas and wood (grape wood is typically used) fuel capabilities. There is also a pig pit. Sometimes (I’ve been told), Bayless will just take a huge paella pan, pull some bricks together and cook right on the patio. Awesome.
Although it was hot outside, there was a nice breeze in the garden. That could be because of the delightful energy of the Bayless Family OR it could be because of the giant concrete wall on the north side that keeps it cooler in the garden than outside on the sidewalk. I am inclined to believe it is the Bayless Family.
There was a koi fish pond and multiple seating areas for entertaining. The deck is built around some boulders because OF COURSE it is. Native prairie grasses, Chinese dogwoods, and papyrus soaked in water are around the porch near marigold that is used for the Day of the Dead celebrations. They also have edible flowers! Prepare for an education… ALL of the following are edible flowers: Garlic, Chive, Sage, Basil, Marigold, Cilantro, Lavender. Did you know that you could eat all of those flowers? I realize some of them are traditional spices, but you can eat more than just the leaves. Interesting. Don’t say I never taught you anything.
A heated green house is where many of the plants are moved during the winter and there is extensive composting (1 ½ TONS a year!). In addition to running this garden, the major composting effort and the greenhouse, there is a container roof top garden at the XOCO restaurant that grows tomatoes, herbs and chili peppers.
The garden is 1000 sq. ft. and can produce as much as 650 pounds of salad greens a year with their April to November harvest. There is also an active beehive. By «active», I mean that I was standing right next to it and that box was humming. It can produce 60 pounds of honey a year. There are also chickens that produce… you guessed it: eggs. Overall, the garden produces about $ 20,000 worth of food for Bayless’ restaurants a year.
Is this tour worth the $ 20? Absolutely, if you want to go visit heaven for a while. The one down side: I got REALLY hungry. I think seeing the outdoor kitchen made a sense-​memory-​thing happen for me where all I wanted were chips and salsa. Oh, well.

No doubt this is as close as you can get to dinner at Rick’s house.
As Candice has already shown, it’s an amazing garden. What didn’t she say?
— Greens production turns over every 7 days
— They do a lot of vertical gardening. Squash plants are strung up (zip tied even!) on to the arbors and are used for blossoms as well as fruit.
— On-​site composting is used to fertilize the beds. Rick has a compost pile as well as a few plastic bins of red worms.
— The raspberries are tasty!
A party was going on in the house. While I was hoping to see Rick in the kitchen, he had a full staff cooking inside.
Tip: Get here on time! I had signed up last year for the tour but arrived late to a locked gate.

This was alot of fun!
Its a great, informative tour of rick and deanna bayless’s garden. you learn alot about whats actually growing, maintenance, sustainabilty and how to grow food for actual resturant production and use. Cameras are allowed, and you are even free to explore a bit on your own if you want.
The wait list is long, but if you sign up, have no fear, you will most likely get to go (the following year or so) — it was well worth the wait. Definitely check this out if you get the chance!
It would be really awesome if you could sample something that was growing — but this wasnt the case. But otherwise, this was a great opportunity to learn and explore.

Chee-​Chaw! Chee-​Chaw!
(that’s my impression of Lindsay Bluth’s impression of possibly one of Rick Bayless’ spring-​into-​summer chickens)
Eerily accurate, right? Well, whatever. Can’t please everyone.
I got to attend a semi-​private garden tour of Rick Bayless’ home garden. Bayless wasn’t home, which I expected (nobody likes seeing a bunch of strangers invade their space and then finger all their annuals), but it was still cool to see his casa and cocina and cock-​a-​doodle dudes (back on the chickens again).
My Dad got us the spots on the tour, which he’d tried to register for last year but they were apparently all full, so he asked to be added to the list and this year he finally got the call. I don’t know that ‘the list’ always takes that long, but my Dad and I, we ain’t anybody special, so that’s how long it took for us. It costs $ 20 and you basically show up, the gardener’s wife checks you off the list, you hang out in the garden, rain or shine, there’s a very minimal amount of Italian soda as a refreshment (nothing fancy, just the liter bottles they sell at whole foods and you pour it into a Dixie cup) and the gardener guy gives you tour and some history for about an hour where you can roam, touch, smell, and do whatever else is a normal-​in-​public thing to do to plants.
For me the highlight was seeing the chicken coup and doing the Arrested Development chicken impression while others tried to not look at what I was doing… someone even remarked, «let’s wait till these people leave to take pictures.» While referring to my Dad and I, but we didn’t care. We paid the same $ 20 they did and we can chee-​chaw and caw-​ka-​caw and coodle-​doodle-​doo all we want, dammit!
There’s also some giant goldfish in a pond and one of those bee house things for bees to come and go freely — but that’s it as far and the wildlife was concerned. If I had to nit-​pick, I’d say the place could use a good garden cat, but I know the Bayless’ are probably busy people so maybe they don’t have time what with all their travels.
Oh yeah, there’s tons of plants and stuff but if you’re like me and don’t know know about basic garden lingo, you’ll probably be a little lost — but no worries, you can still walk around, enjoy and take as many pics as you want.
You get to see Rick’s monster grill and you can see the famous Oaxacan grill pit. You can look in at, but not enter, Rick’s home kitchen where, ‘Mexico: One Plate at a Time’ is filmed and I don’t know that it’s encouraged, but we definitely ate a few leaves of some lettuce stuff from his garden. So that was cool. Good luck getting Bayless cuisine any fresher than that!
And please don’t write to tell me how bad the new season of Arrested Development is. Everybody knows. Time to move on. Let me direct you to something worthy of your time: Malcolm in the Middle; The Bernie Mac Show. Both available on Netflix.
Also, this: