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After 27 kitchens in 27 years, a veteran Champaign-Urbana chef puts his soul into a downtown chicken shack.
Mark “Shades” Hartstein has a voice built for FM radio—smooth, resonant, with a youthful curl to his cadence that belies his 48 years.
When Shades mans the pass as expeditor at Watson’s Shack & Rail in downtown Champaign—the high-pressure conductor responsible for every plate leaving the line—his ticket calls sound less like orders and more like a soulful chant:
“Order in! Half-bird mix, potato wedges, biscuit, and soooup!”
Even when winter saddles him with a nagging cough and a chest cold, his voice kicks up an octave the moment the conversation turns to poultry. He speaks with poetic reverence about breaking down a chicken: removing the wing tips, trimming the carcass, carving away fat.
“I take the two thighs off—the drumstick and the thigh—split that down, and set that aside,” Shades says, his hands moving through the air in rhythm. “Then I take the two breasts off with the wing parts on. Then I take the tender off. The tender is just below the breast meat. That’s pure profit.”
And profit is what Shades—executive lead chef and minority owner at Watson’s—needs to see.
Resembling a life-seasoned lumberjack, Shades looks every bit the part of a cook running a Southern-inspired kitchen. Long, dark, curly tufts of hair jut like wings from the sides of a well-faded baseball cap that covers his balding head. His thick, salt-and-pepper beard suits him like the spiced pickle brine he so lovingly bathes his chicken in. His daily uniform is a flannel plaid shirt pulled over a generous belly, lived-in denim, and scuffed brown work shoes.
During the jittery weeks leading up to Watson’s grand opening, Shades wrestled with the usual operational demons: unproven equipment, green kitchen staff, and menu execution. But mostly, he worried about the food itself.
Would the tomato pudding—a savory, bread-pudding-style recipe borrowed from his wife’s family—translate to central Illinois palates? Would customers scoff at the country ham, deeming a simple spread of ham, house-cultured butter, and bread too pricey and overly finessed? Would vegans even step foot inside a fried chicken joint to try the tofu sandwich or the dark bounty salad?
“Relaxation isn’t your thing,” a coworker observed three days before opening night.
“No,” Shades admitted quietly. “No, it’s not.”
27 Kitchens in 27 Years
Shades is genuinely glad he chose a culinary life, even if the lean years have been long and unforgiving. He has worked his tail off to earn a seat at the table at Watson’s.
“This is my retirement,” he says, leaning over a stainless steel prep table. “This is the last roll of the dice.”
A self-described “dark and brooding” introvert who comes across in conversation as an easygoing, gracious gentleman, Shades calculated a few years back that he’d logged time in 27 kitchens over 27 years. Fifty- and 60-hour workweeks were standard; holding down two kitchen gigs at once was routine. He reels off his local culinary resume—A.J. Wingers, Galileo’s, Top of the Inn, Radio Maria, Black Dog—as easily as he breaks down a chicken breast.
His journey began, predictably enough, at a McDonald’s in the Chicago suburb of Glenview. Though the quiet, bookish teenager’s culinary awakening didn’t happen beneath the golden arches in the 1980s, the job taught him the skeleton of the industry: cash registers, line timing, and custodial elbow grease.
“McDonald’s was 20 times better then than it is now,” he notes with a grin.
His real passion for food ignited the summer after high school at Fortunato’s, a classic Italian pizzeria in Las Vegas, where his family had relocated when he was 17. It was Shades’ first trial by fire under a “barking-order, jerk-face chef,” but he fell in love with the camaraderie and raw energy of the line. The chef offered him a full-time cooking spot, but the Midwestern transplant was restless. He wanted out of Vegas. He wanted the East Coast.
Boston University awaited.
“I’m a young Jewish boy from Chicago, and this is what Jewish boys do,” he says. “They go to college and they get a profession, right?”
He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and then enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, aiming to write and teach. The master’s degree never materialized. Years ago, Shades blamed his academic detour on a stagnant job market and tight departmental budgets. Today, he views it through a clearer lens.
“I was a terrible student,” he admits. “I was unprepared and unmotivated.”
Unprepared did not apply to his work in the kitchen. On the line, Shades was fast, attentive, hungry for hours, and willing to scrub floors until midnight. Cooking was embedded in his DNA anyway, born from years of watching his mother and grandmothers prepare vibrant, traditional Jewish meals.
A.J. Wingers gave him his first shot in a C-U kitchen, launching a nomadic run through the local food scene. Part of his restlessness stemmed from the era itself: in his view, the 1990s local food scene was dominated by large-scale chain restaurants serving uninspired fare. Radio Maria eventually offered a refuge—an inventive kitchen focused on artistic presentation and complex flavor profiles—and Shades spent years trying to land a spot on their line.
At one point, Shades and his wife, Leslie—whom he affectionately describes as an “’80s ex-hippie”—considered buying the Sage City Café in Monticello. But a shaky economy and slim margins scuttled the dream. Other ownership ventures fell through for a simpler reason: a lack of capital.
Shades didn’t save money as a teenager at Mickey D’s, and he didn’t save it over the next three decades of line work. Neither did Leslie, who also works in the food industry.
“Leslie and I are not prepared for retirement,” he says plainly.
Brine, Vinegar, and Perseverance
There was no cinematic, lightbulb moment that turned Shades into a chef. His love for the craft was more like a slow rotisserie roast—gradual, steady, and deep.
As a co-owner who can finally stamp his identity on a menu, he is fiercely devoted to Watson’s daily pickle sampler. It might not carry the immediate decadent appeal of sweet-tea-brined fried chicken or crab hushpuppies, but Shades finds poetry in preservation.
“The pickle part of the whole restaurant is kind of like me,” he says. “It’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years.”
The carrots for the sampler arrive from Blue Moon Farms glowing with a deep, sweet-potato orange. On his rare days off, Shades finds deep satisfaction in trimming the knobby roots, submerging them in a hot vinegar bath steeped with fresh ginger and mustard seed. The brine draws out an earthy, floral heat—a spiky sharpness that warms the palate without the scorched-earth burn of a chili pepper.
Commercial logic dictates that a salty, acidic pickle sampler encourages guests to order another round of craft cocktails. But on a human level, Shades wants diners to taste the patience packed into the jar.
He may eventually leverage his equity in Watson’s to realize another long-cherished dream: opening an authentic, scratch-made Jewish deli in town. For now, though, he is savoring Watson’s early success the way patrons savor its crispy chicken, thick potato wedges, and tangy slaw.
Financially, Shades is making the highest salary of his career, even as he logs brutal 82-hour workweeks. On an hourly breakdown, he makes less than some of his line cooks. But this time, he owns a piece of the building.
Income was never his primary driver anyway; he has repeatedly walked away from comfortable, higher-paying gigs to chase creative freedom in riskier kitchens. What matters to him is the artistry, the sense of place, and the community built around a shared table.
“I get to nourish people physically and maybe spiritually,” Shades says, looking out over the crowded dining room. “I get to provide a space of respite and enjoyment, and hang out with some pretty great folks.”
Describing Watson’s as his “last roll of the dice” carries real weight, and the pressure to succeed is intense. But creating connections through food, honoring age-old culinary traditions, and feeding his community are things that have always meant more to Shades than a paycheck.
Even with everything on the line, that’s one thing that won’t change.
Photo by Sal Nudo