Last night I got to see firsthand the sweet culinary stylings of Chicago's sweetheart chef, Stephanie Izard. I'll get up pics of her big cookbook release party ASAP, but to whet your appetite, here are some tidbits the former Top Chef revealed about her cookbook, her next restaurant project (opening this Spring!), and why she's not leaving Chicago any time soon. If you weren't lucky enough to attend to launch party last night, you can catch Stephanie tonight on the Lillie's Q Meat Mobile, where she'll be serving up soup paired with fresh bread baked by her restaurant's artisan bread-maker. (The menu was planned long before temps started rising again!) The truck will be in the Loop for lunch and in the West Loop around dinner time, and if you buy Stephanie's cookbook, you get your meal for free! Follow her on Twitter for exact locations, and

On the cookbook's user-friendliness: "I've been getting great responses about how approachable the recipes are. There are a lot of fun stories and pictures, so you can read it or you can cook from it. Most of the recipes are from my first restaurant, Scylla, and my childhood. For some of the more difficult recipes, I've tried to give tips and tricks to make things simple, and I just read a review where they said that they worked. I'm glad it's translating as user friendly to the at-home cook."

On recipes from Girl and the Goat: "We started working on this cookbook two years ago, before the Goat was even open, but there are some recipes that found their way onto the menu. The green beans are one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant, and the dressing we use for them is in the cookbook as part of another recipe. We just started working on the Girl and the Goat cookbook, so in about another year and a half all of those recipes will be out."

On her next restaurant: "We're working on the Little Goat. Hopefully it will be open in March. It's in the same neighborhood as Girl and the Goat so I'll be able to skip back and forth and make sure that everything's OK at both places. It will be a straight-up diner, which to me, means tuna melts, patty melts, meatloaf, burgers, chicken pot pie. Only we'll be baking all of our own breads and roasting all of our own meats. We'll make everything better than you remember from your childhood."

On one of her favorite topics, booze: "I think it would be weird to have a bar in a diner, so ours [at Little Goat] will be next door in the bread shop. We'll have lots of craft beers, and I'm sure there'll be a good amount of bourbon involved, since that's where my mind usually goes."

On the future: "I have a couple of more projects in mind that I'd like to do over the next few years, but I don't want to get too big. I interviewed Emeril on a radio show, and I asked him how he oversees so many restaurants all over the country. He said he visits them all every month, but I don't see myself doing that. I'll stay in Chicago."

Source: Chronicle Books