The Dish on Dolinsky

He sipped on his hot green tea as the bakery owner placed a royal blue tray filled with treats in front of us. Five pastries sat on individual blue and orange plates that covered the whole tray: a dulce de leche cake, traditional Portuguese pastries pastel de nata and pastéis de coco, a Portuguese layered pudding dessert, and the weekend special, a mini passionfruit tart with homemade short crust and passionfruit jam. Dolinsky didn’t hesitate to whip out his phone camera, silently repositioning the pastries into picturesque, enticing positions and snapping quick photos to document his research. His photo shoot didn’t last long though. He quickly placed his phone back in his pocket and said, “Which one would you like to try first?”

He carefully pulled out a cloth bundle from his bag and unrolled it, revealing a knife he had brought from home for this excursion. He gently wiped it off and sliced the dulce de leche cake in half. He took two bites, mumbled a few words about its flavor and texture and moved onto the next pastry. He meticulously repeated these motions until the last pastry: the passionfruit tart. After halving it and taking one bite, he uttered a “wow.” And then another, before saying, “This is why people should come here.” His facial expression shifted to concentration as he started outlining his next story in his head.

Dolinsky maintains an aura of seriousness and professionalism around his work while exuding passion and excitement for each meal he consumes. He wants every story to be a full representation of a restaurant and its dishes, including context about the owners and their experiences and the history of each item. “The most important thing about him…his drive to say, ‘This is the world that I am so interested in, so I want you to appreciate it in all the different ways that I do. And so, I’m teaching you about it,’” his colleague, Linda Yu, from ABC7 stated, describing Dolinsky’s passion to share his love of food while educating the people of Chicago about the availability of good food in their city. He’s constantly adapting to the changes in the industry but maintaining his zest for journalism.

For his TV segment, “The Food Guy” on NBC5, he uses his local connections to identify up-and-coming restaurants. Then he tries one to three establishments in the same area. Working two weeks in advance, his segment themes typically revolve around holidays or events, like Diwali, but he likes to make sure each story’s shelf life can be extended by featuring dishes that are offered year-round.

Before trying a restaurant, he researches its specialty dishes — the meals that everyone is talking about — so he can order that and a few other dishes that the staff recommends or that catch his eye.

When Dolinsky sits down to eat, he never finishes his meals. He only takes a couple bites before putting his fork down. This technique and CorePower yoga are his secrets to staying fit as a food journalist. He says it’s easy to maintain a good physique “unless you eat an entire tub full of mascarpone cheese.” He rarely cleans his plates, though he did at Lula Café in Logan Square. Dolinsky only reports on about 30% of the restaurants he visits. He just needs a few bites to determine what should be featured in his segments and what can be left out.

When he first started in food reporting, he was timid, slipping into his old habits as an objective news reporter. Now, with 20 years of food journalism and extensive international travel to countries like Vietnam and Japan under his belt, he has the authority and confidence to actually review and recommend meals and restaurants to his viewers and listeners. It took him over eight years to finally feel comfortable making recommendations and reporting on what tastes delicious.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he majored in broadcast journalism, dreamed of working for ESPN and wrote about sports. After struggling to squeeze into small news markets as a sports anchor, he changed his tune to hard news.

He landed a job at WLUC-TV, an Upper Michigan station, where he reported for about a year, before working in Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. During his time as a news reporter for a couple of local stations, he drove over 50 miles to visit his favorite Thai place in Michigan or a beloved Jewish deli in Iowa. He sought out good food, even when it was inconvenient. He just hadn’t yet figured out how to make into a career.

In 1993, he took a broadcasting job at Chicagoland Television (CLTV), the Chicago Tribune’s 24-hour news channel. After reporting news for about a year, Dolinsky was feeling unfulfilled by his CLTV work. Then the Chicago Tribune announced a brand-new segment called “Good Eating,” which was based on the print newspaper’s food section. Dolinsky resigned as an on-air reporter to become a producer for the show. After two years as producer, Dolinsky moved into the role of host, taking on more responsibilities as the face of the program and maintaining his position as producer.

In 2003, the Chicago Tribune shut down “Good Eating” and asked Dolinsky to revert to news reporting. He shifted his focus to pitching himself as a food reporter. Chicago’s ABC7 station invited him to fill a three-minute segment twice a week about local restaurants and good eats, so he became the “Hungry Hound,” aptly named by Yu and her co-anchor Sylvia Perez on the network for his ability to sniff out delicious meals around the city.

When he was reporting for ABC7, he featured a small soul food restaurant in Hyde Park for one of his “Hungry Hound” segments. A few days after his report aired, he received a phone call from the owner of the restaurant, who shared photos of long lines spanning the block outside of her establishment. This has been deemed the “Steve Dolinsky Effect,” in which businesses experience an influx of customers after he features them in his segments.

His “Hungry Hound” segment expanded to four days a week and ran on ABC7 for 17 years, until the pandemic hit in 2020. After leaving ABC7 in 2021, he became a one-man production band for Chicago’s NBC5, where he became “The Food Guy,” with his reports running every Thursday night at 10 p.m.

In 2016, alongside his news segments, Dolinsky began research for what would develop into his first book, podcast and festival, “Pizza City USA.” He spent six months tasting hundreds of pizzas of all types around Chicago. During his research period, his family was reaping the benefits of his leftovers, receiving four or five new pizzas each week for dinner. His son, who was 16 at the time, begged him to stop bringing it home for dinner. He was tired of eating it nearly every night. Following his exploration, he wrote “Top 5” lists with his findings, like “Top 5 Tavern-Style Pizzas,” for two months. In 2017, he took a Chicago pizza tour, which he found disappointing, so he decided to design his own based upon his extensive research.

In 2018, he published “Pizza City USA: 101 Reasons Why Chicago is America’s Greatest Pizza Town,” his first of two books, which led to the official launch of his Pizza City USA Tours and his “Pizza City” podcast, where he speaks with chefs about their craft.

“Food lends itself to lighting and texture and shading, and you want to see the food,” he says. He learned how to craft stories around meals by consuming cooking programs and articles, like M.F.K. Fisher’s “Consider the Oyster,” Alan Richmond in GQ, and R.W. Apple in The New York Times. He uses his knowledge of food writing and reporting and his deep understanding of the art of display with each meal to entice his viewers.

Dolinsky is a 13-time James Beard Award winner: six times for his work in television, six times for his radio work, and once for his podcast “The Feed,” co-hosted by Chicago celebrity chef Rick Bayless. If he isn’t nominated for awards, he attends the ceremonies as a journalist. He also has served on a panel for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants for over 13 years, overseeing parts of Canada, the Midwest, and the mid-South. Each year, a new country hosts the award ceremony, so he had the opportunity to meet like-minded foodies from different cultures. He also recently won his second Emmy for his reporting on NBC5.

Aside from his expansive resumé and his array of accolades, Dolinsky’s life revolves around his family. Yu said, “He cares so much about so many things, and you think food is the top thing, but it’s still his family.”

Dolinsky married non-foodie Amy Dordek-Dolinsky, and they raised a daughter, who is now 27, and a son, who is 24, together. “We were always included,” Dordek-Dolinsky said when describing her partner’s ability to balance his career and his family. He gave them the opportunity to eat around the world, with their most memorable experience being a dinner they shared in a Buddhist monastery in South Korea, where they learned about the relationship between mindfulness and minimizing wastefulness at meals.

He was determined to raise his kids to appreciate a good meal. Dordek-Dolinsky said, “You couldn’t be somebody who said, ‘I don’t eat this or that in our family.’” He encouraged his two kids to taste everything once, and even expanded his influence on his daughter’s best friend, who refused to eat anything but Kraft Mac-and Cheese before tasting Dolinsky’s homemade udon noodle soup.

A homecooked meal was not rare for Dolinsky, even with his heavy research and reporting schedule at restaurants scattered around Chicago. His family’s favorite signature dish of his, nicknamed “McStevens,” is an homage to McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches with sausage, egg and cheese on an English Muffin.

At home and in his work, Dolinsky strives for generosity, and it shows through his relationships. Dordek-Dolinsky said, “He’s rooting for every single restauranteur and every single place he visits…. He’s rooting for the little guy…who’s doing something unique and special.” Dolinsky is passionate about highlighting and uplifting talented culinary artists around Chicago.

After 30 years in journalism, 20 years as a food reporter, an impressive resumé of experiences and awards, and an envious number of completed bucket list items, Dolinsky is still just as passionate about his work. He’s diving headfirst into “Pizza City USA.” He’s leaning into traditional tavern style pizza production even more and creating his own brand. Although he’s done everything he sought out to do and more, his love of food keeps him going back for one more bite.