Hagop Hagopian has spent his culinary career in relentless pursuit of better. He has competed in 18 culinary competitions and taken home 18 medals. He has helmed kitchens across Chicago, mastering every discipline – from butchery to pastry to the kind of multi-course, Michelin-level precision that most chefs spend a lifetime chasing. He has taught at College of DuPage, mentored young chefs, and built one of the most quietly formidable culinary teams in the city. And for the last 13 years, he has done all of it from the kitchen at The Clare – where he arrived with one condition firmly on the table.
“I want carte blanche in the kitchen,” he told The Clare team during his final interview. “If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right, and I’m going to do it my way.”
They agreed. The culinary program at The Clare hasn’t been the same since.
The Sky’s the Limit
Chef Hagop didn’t come to The Clare to coast. “I did not move to senior living to have an easier life,” he says. “I went to senior living so I can do weekly menu changes, to challenge myself and, basically, the sky’s the limit.”
That freedom – to create, to push, to evolve – is what drew him in and what has kept him for more than a decade. The scope of what he oversees reflects it. Across four distinct venues –The Abbey on Fifty Three, The Grafton, the Garden Table Bistro, and The Ambassador Lounge – Chef Hagop and his culinary team produce cuisine measured against the full breadth of Chicago’s dining scene.
“Every restaurant in the area is our competition,” he says. “From the hamburger place, to the pubs, the bars, the fine dining restaurants, and the Michelin restaurants. We compete with all of it.”
The Abbey on Fifty Three is a gourmet, fine dining experience in which Chef Hagop himself helms for roughly 15 guests at a time. The Grafton incorporates elevated ingredients like foie gras and lobster alongside weekly-rotating small plates that might feature grilled octopus with Italian salsa verde one week and hiramasa with avocado the next.
The Ambassador Lounge brings craft pub-style approachability – pizzas, house-made chili, and fish and chips – while the Garden Table Bistro covers fresh soups, grain bowls, and scratch-made sandwiches daily. “We treat them like four separate venues,” he says. “None of the restaurants should compete with each other.”
“The Palate Keeps Getting Better”
What drives Chef Hagop isn’t just the scale of the operation. It’s the people for whom he’s serving – curating menus and evolving the culinary program to meet their standards.
The Clare’s residents are among the most accomplished, well-traveled diners in the city. People who have spent decades at Chicago’s finest tables and around the world’s best restaurants. To Chef Hagop, that isn’t pressure. That’s the whole point.
“As you age, your palate keeps getting better. You are not able to trick anybody,” he says. The Clare residents know what great food tastes like and what an exceptional culinary experience means. And that, in his view, is an invitation to keep raising the bar.
Scratch Everything
Walk into The Clare’s kitchen and you’ll understand immediately what these standards demand in practice. Sacks of unpeeled carrots. Whole garlic heads. Herbs that haven’t been touched until service. Fish butchered in-house and served the same day. Salmon curing in homemade beet marinade. Every protein handled with the same deliberate care.
“The most important thing in senior dining is to stay away from processed foods,” Chef Hagop says. “Just stay away from it altogether.” The reasoning is equal parts culinary and nutritional. Processed foods carry excessive sodium. They’re dehydrating, hard on blood pressure, and disruptive at night. “We want you to go to sleep feeling good.”
The details are non-negotiable and held to the highest standards of a premier culinary experience. Carbon steel pans for searing – never aluminum, which oxidizes. Stainless steel for sauces. Sharp knives on every station, because dull blades bruise food and accelerate oxidation. Extra virgin olive oil to finish dishes. Local mushrooms from a longtime Chicago purveyor Four Star Mushrooms. Microgreens grown regionally. Meat sourced within roughly 150 miles.
“It’s fundamental, disciplined cooking with a high standard,” he says.
A Kitchen That Never Stops Learning
Chef Hagop’s kitchen is, by design, a teaching kitchen. Most of his team has been with him for years – turnover is low, and he invests heavily in keeping it that way. Every cook rotates through all stations: cold side, gourmet dining room, pastry, butchery, The Abbey on Fifty Three. There are no specialists locked into one lane.
Impromptu training sessions happen when Chef Hagop spots a teachable moment rather than when they’re scheduled on a calendar. “I just stop production when I see an opportunity.” His team recently passed a blind wine tasting, correctly identifying a Napa Valley Cabernet from the Rhône Valley. He also spent a year and a half teaching at College of DuPage, staying connected to younger generations entering the craft. “We need to keep in touch with the generations that are younger than us,” he says. “It keeps you relevant.”
The mission, as he sees it, is simple: “Keep teaching the staff, invest in them, and you’ll have a well-oiled machine.”
The Relationships That Drive Everything
What separates a chef cooking for strangers from a chef cooking for residents, Chef Hagop says, is connection. At The Clare, that connection runs deep. Many residents have his cell phone number. He texts them the night before a favorite dish is going on the menu. Conversations happen on his commute.
“It’s pure hospitality,” he says. “If I have a resident who likes a certain dish, the night before, I’ll text the resident and say, ‘Hey, I have this on the menu coming on for you. I’m just letting you know it’s going to be on tomorrow.’”
These relationships don’t soften the standard. They sharpen it. Prospective residents and visitors, he says, should leave feeling exactly what his current residents feel: that the food is technically sound, genuinely excellent, and “rare to find at another restaurant.”
There Is No Finish Line
Ask Chef Hagop what success looks like for the dining program at The Clare and he won’t give you a tidy answer.
“There’s no success,” he explains. “It’s just the constant striving for more, for next. Better. You can’t be content. You need to stay sharp. You can’t be comfortable in this. If you’re comfortable, you’ll slip.”
Thirteen years. Eighteen culinary competitions, eighteen medals. Weekly menu rotations, impromptu demos, and a dining program that competes openly with Chicago’s finest.
This is the philosophy – and the person – behind the pass at The Clare.