"FronteraGrill" news and stories

Xoco's churros are hard to get. Photo: ehfisher/flicker.

Would you wait three days for a "Top Chef" churro?

Rick Bayless, one of Chicago's top chefs and the winner of Bravo's "Top Chef Masters," is extending his gourmet Mexican empire to street food. Last week, he added XOCO (pronounced "Sho-Co") to his string of Windy City hot spots including Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. The latest aims to bring authentic Mexican tortas and caldos (sandwiches and soups) to the masses. How did it go over with the locals? The line snaked out the door.

When Slashfood swung by for after-dinner churros -- the delectable fried-dough treats sprinkled with sugar and spices -- it took three nights of trying to get in.

Chicago's own Rick Bayless may be the king of Mexican cuisine in America, but his win on "Top Chef Masters" proved the chef could also cook through the canon of other world cuisines.

Bayless slogged through tongue, Southern Italian cuisine and Oaxacan mole to emerge victorious on the competition.

"It's really hard," Bayless tells Slashfood of the experience. "Plain and simple, really really hard."

Now he's offering his advice to winning the competition.

"What I learned going through the first competition is that it's a game," Bayless says. "Yes, you have to be a good cook, but you have to be able to play that game."

So, all you "Top Chef" wannabes, you need to create a strategy.

"You have to choose which path you're going to go down and you never look back. Once you start second-guessing yourself, you really lose your focus, and then you can't do a good job with what you're doing," he says. "A couple of times I chose to do something and then halfway through I'd go 'Wow it would have been so much better if I'd done something else,' I'd say 'No, put that away and make the absolute best out of this thing that you did.'"