Iliana Regan

Iliana Regan is an American chef and restaurateur. She ran the restaurant Elizabeth in Chicago from 2012 to 2020, receiving Michelin stars in each year. Since 2019, she has been the owner of The Milkweed Inn in Wetmore, Michigan.

Early life and education Regan was born (1979) in Merrillville, Indiana. In the spring of 2022 she earned an MFAW from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Career Regan worked as a waitress and as a cook in several fine-dining restaurants in Chicago, including Trio, Schwa, and Alinea under Grant Achatz and Michael Carlson.

In 2008, she began selling microgreens and vegetables at farmer's markets, soon expanding her offerings to include pierogi.

Regan named her restaurant Elizabeth for her deceased sister, opening in Chicago's Lincoln Square in 2012. Elizabeth features home-grown and foraged ingredients, originally served multi-course prix fixe menus at three 8-seat communal tables in the style of Regan's supper club. She later condensed the menu and removed the communal tables. The restaurant was immediately well-received, earning a Michelin star in its second year.

Regan opened a second restaurant in 2017, Kitsune, with Japanese influences. It closed in 2019. The Milkweed Inn hosts 10 guests each weekend April through October at $750 to $1750 per person for a "new gatherer" culinary experience. The New York Times called it "perhaps the definitive Midwest drunken-lesbian food memoir." In it she describes incidents "before she got sober 10 years ago, ran away from the police in handcuffs, had sex in bar bathrooms and used her car key to administer bumps of cocaine."

In January 2023 her second memoir, Fieldwork was published highlighting her years spent foraging and living in the woods.

Recognition

In 2008 Chicago Magazine named Regan's pierogi the best in the city. Smithsonian named Burn the Place to their list of 2019's ten best books about food. Burn the Place won the Midland Author's prize in non-fiction Burn the Place also won the prize in non-fiction from Story Studio Chicago.

Personal life Regan is married to Anna Hamlin. They met while Hamlin was working with a wine distributor and managing the Elizabeth account. They reside at Milkweed Inn with their four dogs.