Local caterer growing into new location

Dave Esau has seen life from both sides of the tracks.

Right now, he feels he is on the right track.

Esau opened his popular catering establishment, Dave's Specialty Foods, in Mount Prospect five years ago.

Esau, who grew up in the area and graduated from Buffalo Grove High School, attended Dumas Pere L'Ecole de Cuisine Culinary School in Glenview in 1985. At the time, he was working at Chicago's Ritz Carlton Hotel.

He then went to Lyon, France, to study cooking, after which he plied his trade at Retro Bistro, which he helped open, Le Titi de Paris and Charlie Trotter's.

He opened Dave's at 512 W. Northwest Highway, on the north side of the tracks, but it wasn't long before he outgrew the 450-square-foot space.

"It was like the size of a bedroom," said Esau, adding there was no office or storage space. "We were catering big parties, but I didn't know where we were putting the food."

He didn't have to look far to find a better space just across the tracks at 105 W. Prospect Ave. He called it "an awesome move. We needed a bigger space."

Esau, who lives in Arlington Heights with his childhood sweetheart, Julie, said he is feeding off business from women pushing their strollers along Prospect Avenue and customers at such neighboring businesses as gaming and furniture shops.

"It's all mom and pops all the way down. There are no chains here at all," he said.

That contrasts with the Northwest Highway location (where he still bakes his bread, by the way). "It's flyby. The visibility you would think is better. But it's all flyby. People are just flying by … Here they can say I can walk there. So that makes a big difference."

Examples of Esau's wares were featured at the recent Downtown Happenings event sponsored by the Mount Prospect Downtown Merchants Association.

"He's the kind of guy who's not afraid of competition," said Tom Zander, president of the association, referring to the possibility of more restaurants in the area. "Dave (says), 'Bring it on, the more the merrier.'"

Those attending were treated to sandwiches with barbecued pork, cold cuts, and mozzarella with pesto and carmelized onions.

There were also generous helpings of cheese, including a wheel of morbier, a French cheese whose origin Esau described in exhaustive detail.

"You milk the cow in the morning and then you make cheese from that milk and you make curds from rennet and you lay the cheese in the molds halfway filled and then it sets right away. They make this ash out of vegetables. It's very classic French. (Nobody) else other than the French do that. They lay the ash on top of that cheese and then they milk the same cows at night and they make another layer of cheese on top of that ash."

Esau, who sells about 70 cheeses, most of them imported from Europe, said, "I like turning people onto cheese."

Almost all of Esau's business comes from catering.

"The lunch business has doubled," he said. "It's not where I want to be yet. I'd like to have people in here, sitting here grabbing a seat outside. We're getting there."

The menu is available at the store's Web site, www.davespecialtyfoods.com. It offers such appetizers as Dave's Cous-Cous Salad with raisins, pine nuts and apples; vegetable concoctions like Dave's polenta with herbs and asiago cheese; and main course meat and fish dishes, including chicken breast marinated and grilled with wild mushroom sauce.

Have room for dessert? The menu includes dark chocolate ganache cake, lemon bars and caramel brownies.

The catering menu consists of items ranging from beef stroganoff and crepes with chicken filling for breakfast to entrees such as Chardonnay-poached whole salmon filet with cucumber dill sauce.

The shop is open Tuesday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is closed Sunday and Monday, but the catering business is open seven days a week.

For more information, call (847) 259-9510.