Our Story

Thank you for visiting this site. My name is Darnell Reed and I am the Chef/Owner at Luella's Southern Kitchen. I am excited to have the opportunity to serve the Lincoln Square community. For the first 18 years of my career, I have been a hotel Chef at Hilton Worldwide and have worked in historic hotels such as the Palmer House Hilton.

 I am well versed in many cuisines and traveled the world for food and research. Over the years I have visited Morocco, London, Paris, Finland, Puerto Rico, New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and a few southern locations which I will get into shortly, never returning without ideas to enhance my culinary repertoire. My passion is food, but my first love is food of the south! In 1943 my great grandmother Luella Funches moved to Chicago from Morgan City Mississippi.

She was the first person in our family to live in this city and now we have been here for 70 years!

Luella brought her southern roots with her including her flair in the kitchen. Every holiday event or family get together would be held at Luella's house. Growing up I loved her cooking and would hang around her in the kitchen after school until my mom would pick me up. As I started to grow as a professional I would pick Luella's brain for recipes and techniques. She taught me how to make Cornbread and Gumbo, amongst other things.

Today I can express my life experiences through my food. The more of my southern influence comes through in my food, the more a student of the cuisine I become. Over the years I frequently travel to the south to places like New Orleans, Georgia and Charleston, mostly in search of the brilliant food of the south.

Some of my personal favorites are my Shrimp and Grits, which are made in the style of New Orleans BBQ Shrimp, Luella's Chicken Gumbo and after my trip to Charleston the Low Country Shrimp and Crab Boil and She Crab Soup! The food of Luella's Southern Kitchen will reflect this story

In 2013 Darnell asked me to join him and start a restaurant both as an investor as well as in business development and management, due to my background at managing people and resources. I knew I could run a restaurant. I have a cooking background; I took culinary arts for 3 years in high school. Darnell and I had the same culinary arts teacher.

I worked in the at the Marriott and BJ Market as a cook when I was younger. However I felt like moving into business administration was the right move for my future.

I left the service industry and I joined Menards as a flooring manager for over 8 years. There, I developed a great business acumen and developed my branch to rank in the top 20 of over 300 locations. Today, I am an entrepreneur, a real estate investor and proud father of two boys and a lovely girl.