Evan Funke

Chef Evan Funke is a two-time James Beard-nominated chef who brings two decades of experience to the Windy City, along with international acclaim from the success of his restaurants in Los Angeles - Felix Trattoria on Abbot Kinney in Venice, Mother Wolf in Hollywood and Las Vegas, and eponymous Funke in Beverly Hills.

Felix, which opened in 2017, features a menu focused on the time-honored techniques of making pasta fatta a mano organized by various regions of Italy; at the Mother Wolf, Funke pays homage to the Eternal City of Rome and La Cucina Romana - a concept that has just expanded to Fontainebleau Las Vegas; while eponymous Funke is a culmination of all of chef’s culinary experiences as a three-story love letter to Italy.

Funke, a culinary storyteller, is a custodian of Italian tradition and a master of the old world techniques and culture of handmade pasta. His critically acclaimed cookbook, American Sfoglino, was published and released in fall of 2019. The book won the 2020 IACP Award for Best Cookbook, Chefs and Restaurants and received a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Photography in 2020. Since 2022, Funke has served as the official chef of the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. On the small screen, Tastemade produced a feature-length documentary film titled ‘Funke,’ which recounts his journey as a chef through to the opening of his restaurant Felix in Los Angeles. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2018 and is now streaming on Tastemade, as well as Amazon Prime and Hulu. In the spring of 2020, the eight-part docuseries, ‘Shape of Pasta,’ produced by Ugly Brother Studio, features Funke’s journeys throughout Italy as he works to preserve the rare and obscure traditional pasta shapes of Italy. ‘Shape of Pasta’ is currently available to stream on Roku.