Jason Hammel

Jason Hammel is the executive chef and owner of Chicago's Lula Cafe, the Logan Square community institution known for its creative, seasonal, all-day cuisine. In 2024, Lula Cafe received the Outstanding Hospitality Award from the James Beard Foundation.

Since 1999, Lula has been at the forefront of the farm-to-table movement in the Midwest, but growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, Hammel aspired to be a writer, not a chef. After graduating in 1994 with a degree in English, he traveled to Italy, where an accidental stay across the street from Florence’s central market foretold his career as a chef dedicated to seasonality.

Hammel has developed a reputation as a conscientious leader and a progressive voice in the restaurant community. As a member of the Independent Restaurant Association, he lobbied for federal assistance for the restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, the Museum of Contemporary Art named Hammel as executive chef/culinary curator for the museum’s new restaurant, Marisol, in the heart of downtown Chicago. At Marisol, Hammel continues to prioritize seasonality and freshness, along with an enlivened aesthetic vision.

Lula and Marisol have both been featured in the press, including on NPR’s “This American Life” and in The New York Times, where Lula was named one of Chicago's 25 Best Restaurants in April 2024. Lula has also been awarded the prestigious Bib Gourmand honor by the Michelin Guide. Hammel himself has been named a StarChefs Rising Star, the Jean Banchet 2019 Chef of the Year, and was a three time finalist for the James Beard Awards for Best Chef: Great Lakes. His debut cookbook, "The Lula Cafe Cookbook: Collected Recipes and Stories," was published in 2023.

Today, Hammel splits his time between Lula, Marisol, and the non-profit food education group Pilot Light, which he co-founded in 2010. Pilot Light develops classroom lessons that weave food and nutrition into everyday subjects like English, math, social studies and science, reaching more than 10,000 students. Through his work in education and in the kitchen at Lula, Hammel seeks to bring community, creativity, and nourishment back to the table.