Michael Scott Carter - Bibliophile
“I am an invisible man...I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Ralph Ellison declares in his classic novel, Invisible Man. This is one of the gems you may find while walking East 53rd St in Hyde Park escaping the chilling grasp of Autumn in Chicago into the warm wooden interior of Bibliophile. This restaurant slash bookstore slash alcohol-infused pâtisserie slash public house is a concept many wouldn’t expect outside of downtown, but owner, Michael Scott Carter, is pioneering a new image of Hyde Park. Leave it to the uninspired media and you’ll have a singular unflattering impression of the South Side and of Black Chicago. Many can’t imagine someone who is witty, polymathic, verbose, urbane, a helicopter pilot, well-traveled, and with a proper handle on sarcasm and dark humor to come out of the South Side. He isn’t the exception nor a rarity, just invisible, but he’s out there. How do I know? I was sitting right in front of him.
Michael Scott Carter was born into a family of educators and business people. Parents who didn’t shelter or prepare him as in for a battle, but instilled ideals of excellence. Born to a neighborhood that had periods of danger, economic depression, and violent racism, these factors wouldn’t come to shape his character through his diligent upbringing.
“I was born in Roseland and then, in high school, I moved to Beverly - a great flight amidst the war on drugs. The railways that were on the South Side of Chicago, much like Detroit and Cleveland, is where the lower, middle, and upper-class Black people lived because the Pullman [railcar company] built housing so that the workers would have a place to live. They had put together, effectively, a neighborhood much like General Motors...Jackson to 27th St was absolute nothing. It was dangerous to cross Jackson when I was growing up. Beverly still is a good neighborhood, but it’s a strange neighborhood. It’s full of White Irish and a lot of police officers and those who can’t afford it move to Mount Greenwood. So, when I was younger they would, as a punishment for whatever reason, drop us in Mount Greenwood and we’d have to run home hoping that we weren’t stopped and beaten. It was a fun time.
The parents, they were still living with a 70s mindset, so we played until the street lights came on, but it was in the backdrop of violence that they didn’t fully understand because there was no news media to permeate the understanding of what’s happening. The reason there was a height of abduction and murders was because there was no way to get it out except for the newspaper - the limited information. So, you were fictitiously living in a great neighborhood.”
While discussing his upbringing, his parents and their divorce, he breaks for a philosophical conversation on systems of transportation and how they become milestones of destruction and decline for the communities they encounter.
“My father worked and helped build the Dan Ryan [expressway], which I don’t know if that was a good thing considering they could have planned that a little bit better. Arguably a system of trolleys would have done the city better. It cut through the center of the city and there was a lot of devastation of neighborhoods that could have been avoided if they moved it two miles west.”
His family’s business acumen would instruct him in his future business endeavors and his mother would make him a man of intelligence and instruct him on how to navigate the world. In the Carter family, there would be no such thing as being inexact, careless, and lazy.
“We had businesses, drug stores, before Walgreens had a foothold in the city. [referencing the business environment he grew in] We were very much a part of it. So, on the car rides over I’d have to read things that my mother needed for work because she didn’t have the time. It was her way to check my reading and allow for me to understand sentence structure and punctuation. It was a different time then. Then there is code-switching. The lexiconic structure of language was very different, so you, ostensibly, had to learn two languages and be able to use them effectively. Although one was passively taught and the other, as in English, was taught rather aggressively. My family was educators, so there was no mincing of words. Pun intended. Also because we lived in between that Black and White divide, my mother wouldn’t allow us to have that accent that a lot of Black people would have to attempt to sound assimilated [it being about being proper and about tone]. What my mother realized was that we were going to have to live in two worlds quite harshly.”
After high school, he would find himself in London for the next 14 years where he studied law and later made a career as an economist and a banker. It would be here where he would meet his wife, Fabiana, whose passion for cooking led her throughout Europe studying the culinary arts. They came to a point where they had to decide their next steps. With their first child, they considered Brazil, Chicago, and South Africa due to a job Michael was offered, but considering the dangerous climate in South Africa at the time he declined “I’m not one who will shirk gun violence because I grew up with it, but theirs was exceptional.” After some deliberation, they decided on Chicago where they would go to open up their first bakery, Fabiana’s Bakery.
Michael’s business model was to consolidate their bakery and the restaurant to allow for as much guest access as possible. Both businesses being only a couple of doors apart, you can have a coffee and pastry in the day time and then have a wonderful dinner at night. Bibliophile’s menu offers palo santo scented bone marrow, foie gras, and high tea service all in a shroud of books making its dining experience both elevated and unique. His sights are on a James Beard Award and a Michelin Star and bringing one to Hyde Park would be a tremendous accomplishment, but he’s received an unexpected pushback.
“You wouldn’t have known obviously that we are a Black and Brown business because my wife, being Latina, and I think that is a bit disconcerting for some observers in public because they want there to be a more strident stance in setting your flag out, but, the trouble is, our intent is not leading with one’s phenotype. There are also strange expectations that come with that - when people find out. There are mixed reviews actually. Some people are really quite expectant and others are really quite harsh, actually. We are often maligned for attempting to move through the structure that’s in place that allows you to get the awards you need.”
Though not being one of his vocal critiques, Michael discussed prevalent conversation in the world of Black cuisine, which is the expectation that Black restaurants automatically have to serve Black, or a variation of Black, food, and if you do, that it has to be “authentic” with no deviation whatsoever. This ends up narrowing the expression of Black cuisine, business, and representation to something uncreative and monolithic, and becomes a stall to progress.
“This is why some of the better restaurants that have very ethnic cuisines will be on the outskirts, or just outside of that, because it is easier for them to not serve the people who are expecting it because they can be more experimental. If someone goes into a place and says ‘I want soul food.’ not soul food with a twist. [They want their grandma’s food exactly how it’s cooked] at a restaurant that your grandmother never worked at.”
Since its opening last October, of 2018, the restaurant has gotten rave reviews. The ambiance, the food, the books, the curated wine lists, and craft cocktails are all receiving a warm welcome by the residents of Hyde Park. The only issue they’ve encountered is staffing. “The trouble is it’s more difficult to find employees because most people expect to go downtown to work in the restaurant industry. That’s been a challenge too because, unless you’re attached to a group, you can’t say ‘you’re going to work in Hyde Park’.” Experiencing a few changes in staff, Michael is working on keeping a consistent team the people of Hyde Park can grow familiar with. One of his newest additions is lead bartender, and Hyde Park resident, Mark Coulter. A young man in this industry, his driving force is his intention and determination. He started as a party promoter and then became enchanted with the high level of detail and pride in presentation he saw from craft bartenders. Impressed, he began reading all the cocktail books he could find and created a network of industry friends who would teach and support him in his new career. He came across the opportunity to work at Bibliophile while looking for a new part-time job. His first night behind the bar was his stage and that night there was an event for the Chicago woman-led nonprofit, Causing a Stir. There he saw many familiar faces and said that he, then, knew “This was a good sign”. His intention for the bar program is excellence and stability, and after that “Then we’ll have fun.”
Michael Scott Carter is interesting, a character in the best way, and any attempt to follow him down one of his rabbit holes of dark humor may leave you disheveled. In fact, at the beginning of our conversation he called out that my first child was a girl, “I could tell you had a girl first. There’s a certain demeanor of men who have girls first. You shouldn’t imply this to mean anything other than what I’m saying, but there’s a gentleness in the approach whereas [being a father of two boys] I don’t have to be. It’s a very straight-lined approach.” While discussing retirement plans he reveals his interest in learning a new language every year and a possible Ph.D. in archeology. It isn’t difficult to surmise that he and his wife, Fabiana, have different interests, “I’m more Victorian. I like to pursue my own passions that probably cost too much. [like what?] I’m finishing up a helicopter pilot license right now.”
Michael’s sights aren’t set just high, they are set to vertical. Aside from award aspirations, he plans on opening more library-themed restaurants with the second one already named, Dewey Decimal. His style of cuisine is unseen in Hyde Park and given most people assume their socialite nights begin and end downtown, he understands the growth may take a little time. “People are awakening to Chicago,” Michael says, unaware that it is he who is the one waking them up.