Why you likely won't see Hot Doug's, Kuma's and Piece at Lollapalooza

Lollapalooza rocks. But the food?

Not so much.

Graham Elliot Bowles wants to change that. Last year, the tattooed, music-minded Top Chef Masters contestant cooked for Lolla founder and Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell and fed the sunburned masses favorites from his eponymous restaurant. This year, as the fest’s first food czar, he’s attempting to curate a lineup of local restaurants that will join him in what’s being called “Chow Town.” Bowles is taking write-in requests on the Lollapalooza website (lollapalooza.com/foodsurvey) for categories like hot dog and pizza, and foodies have begun to lobby for their favorite spots.

“The goal is to highlight some of the indie restaurants that share the same DIY aesthetic the bands have,” Bowles said recently via e-mail. “We want to offer food that reflects the diverse culinary makeup of the city.” Bowles told us he intends to ask Hot Doug’s and heavy-metal burger bar Kuma’s Corner.

Sure, we’d love to grab a pheasant sausage or a Mastodon burger before checking out Lady Gaga. But as we found out when speaking to the owners of some likely front-runners on Bowles’s list, he might have a challenge persuading local eateries to serve some 225,000 Lolla-goers.

“I’m not sure if we could do it,” Kuma’s owner Mike Cain says. “The concern is that it’s not going to be the exact same product that you get in my restaurant. It’s not like I make a McDonald’s cheeseburger here. There’s only a certain amount I’d want to compromise the product. There’s a bunch of burgers I couldn’t do. I couldn’t make the signature Kuma Burger, because I don’t know where I could fry an egg. And with lines like you see at Lollapalooza, I don’t know that it’s feasible.”

Likewise, Hot Doug’s owner Doug Sohn says he would be reluctant to serve his revered exotic encased meats at Lolla.

“Those kind of festivals are out of our ballpark,” he says. “The scope of the event and the quantities would mean shutting down the restaurant.” Besides, Sohn adds, the musician he most wants to serve—Joe Strummer—is dead.

Piece, the pizza bar that boasts Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen as an investor, also took itself out of the running for the Lolla lineup. “With that many people to serve, it would be a challenge to keep quality up to par because every pizza we make is hand-formed,” co-owner Bill Jacobs says. “We’re very volume conscious.”

Bowles says the fact that he pulled off Lolla last year is proof good food can be done at a festival. But he admits it wasn’t easy. “Graham Elliot sold close to 10,000 lobster corn dogs last year, and they were a pain in the dick to prepare!” he says. “Never mind the 18-hour days and the hauling of goods back and forth during the festival. The brunt of the work is in the prep and planning stages.”

He says it couldn’t have been done without the use of Calihan Catering’s equipment and recruiting volunteer laborers via Facebook and Twitter.

Despite the drudgery, Bowles is confident he can persuade others to navigate Lolla’s logistics. He’s even closing graham elliot during the fest.

“Once everyone is on board,” he says, “we’ll do whatever we can to help people get set up for success.”

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