David Campigotto seemed unnerved that I was taking my cassoulet to go. “If you cover the beans while they’re hot it can make them pass out,” he told me, insisting I leave the lids ajar on the two 32-ounce plastic deli cups he had carefully packed with sausage, pork rib and duck leg confit, creamy white haricots lingots, and a heart-stopping amount of fat.
“You can make a cassoulet out of whatever you want,” he said. “That’s not gonna be a Castelnaudary cassoulet.” I did in fact mash up the two recipes, but I was really just trying to bait the chef. I received a similar pregnant pause a few weeks earlier when I told Kahan the same thing.
Campigotto’s father eventually taught him the recipe, and he reopened his restaurant in town in 2012, a 30-seat spot that can put out 30 terrrines per day in the summer high season, and is gradually achieving a reputation as a destination for cassoulet tourists. That’s how Delilah’s owner Mike Miller found him six months later. Miller, on a quest to find the world’s best cassoulet, came in one day. The Gun Club, Violent Femmes, and Ministry were on sound systems, and the beans blew him away. When the chef emerged from the kitchen a bond was quickly formed. “I said I can make in Chicago if you find me a place.” That April the chef arrived, and Miller began leaving persistent messages on Kahan’s voicemail.
The dinners are great theater, with Miller telling the story of Castelnaudary cassoulet and how it came to Chicago, while Campigotto serves guests tableside, making sure each gets a rib, a sausage, and a piece of duck, along with the fat-saturated beans and pieces of the precious crunchy crust. There are no breadcrumbs—that’s a cheap shortcut to achieving a proper crust, according to Campigotto. And there’s no tomato—the acidity would cause the beans to pass out. But the depth of flavor and texture and the power of the extraordinary richness that slowly develops over days of work have the effect of a Quaalude, in Kahan’s description. “You don’t eat it and go ‘this is rich,’” he says. “Your body tells you how rich it is. And you don’t need a lot of it. When you eat something that good it completely changes your mood.” v
