I’ve spent a lot of time in Minooka this week, and residents keep telling me the same thing: A restaurant like Rooted has never existed in town before.
Minooka is a town of 13,000 people, historically agricultural, and best known as where actor Nick Offerman grew up. When you Google “best restaurants in Minooka,” the search results return bars and pancake houses.
In conversations with locals, they tell me that if they wanted a night out at a fancy restaurant — the type of place with a wine list — you’d normally head up Interstate 80 to Joliet, to Naperville, or you brave the 70-minute drive (that’s without traffic) to downtown Chicago.
That changed in late 2023 when Rooted opened in downtown Minooka.
In my years writing about restaurants, what I’ve learned is that often the most successful ones come from owners from a different walk of life. People from another industry, who dreamt of running a restaurant, and decided to go for it.
Eddie Duracka grew up in Minooka. A machinist by trade, he became a chef and cooked at two of the western suburbs’ most acclaimed restaurants: Vie and Virant, under chef Paul Virant. Around the time of the pandemic, feeling some burnout, he returned to the machining world and figured he was done with kitchens.
Then there’s Brenda Keener, a fourth-generation Minookan and longtime physician assistant, whose family knew the Durackas. Keener dreamed of opening a restaurant in her hometown, and when the space at 125 Mondamin St. became available, she and her husband got ahold of the space.
Somewhere in conversation, Eddie Duracka learned that Keener was looking for a chef and he raised his hand. Duracka cooked a dinner for Keener; she told him it was one of the best meals she’s ever had.
Rooted opened in late 2023, and it’s the type of farm-to-table restaurant you would expect in Logan Square.
Shaved carrot salads with sesame-fennel seed-nut crunch. Green bean tempura with smoked tarragon aioli. A thick slab of pork chop, fried in cornmeal, served on creamed corn and topped with kimchi ramps. This is cooking that’d fit seamlessly into a downtown restaurant but instead its serving in a village of 13,000.
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