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When acclaimed chef Rick Bayless first started to serve free-range chicken in his restaurant, Frontera Grill, dishes were sent back regularly.

Even after he made adjustments in the dish and smoked the chicken, customers were still not satisfied.

The complaint: it tasted too much like chicken.

Some people just were not used to the strongly fresh flavor of a chicken that had actually run around, Bayless said.

Bayless, award-winning chef-owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, cookbook author and television personality, told this story Tuesday night at the Chicago History Museum's event “The Local Option," stressing the importance of fresh, locally grown foods to exceptional cuisine.

“I think this is such an incredibly exciting time to be in Chicago, to be eating in Chicago,” said Bayless. “We have great farmers markets and we have the best restaurants we’ve ever had here.”

Sarah Stegner, co-owner and chef at Prairie Grass Café in suburban Northbrook, said when she worked for the Ritz-Carlton, she was sent to France to train. There she was exposed to a whole new food world – where the quality of ingredients was deeply respected – unlike anything she had seen in the United States.

When she came back, she wanted to apply the simple concept of quality to her work. Stegner thought about the best foods that she had ever experienced and tried to figure out how to put them on a plate in her restaurant.

“Cooking locally meant simplicity,” Stegner said. “I wanted a carrot to taste like a carrot and a tomato to taste like a tomato.”

In order to eat locally, there need to be more local farms.

“The good news is that there are more and more local farms,” Dave Cleverdon said. “But the bad news is there’s not a whole lot of local farms in Illinois.”

Cleverdon is a farmer and owns Kinnikinnick Farms in Caledonia, Ill., about 80 miles northwest of Chicago. He is also on the board of the Green City Market in Lincoln Park.

It takes almost a generation to develop a farmer, keeping in mind the capital investment, learning curve and training involved, Cleverdon explained.

But in order to have more local farms, there needs to be a market for local food – it’s a symbiotic relationship.

“When I started our restaurants 21 years ago, I realized that the only thing I could really do was become partners with the farmers – we would make a commitment,” Bayless said. “Without great local agriculture, we cannot have great local cuisine in Chicago.”

Cleverdon agreed: “If you ever want to help a farmer, find him a market.”

Cleverdon praised Bayless’s Frontera Farmer Foundation and other local chefs as the key to the improving markets and support of local farmers.

The Frontera Farmer Foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes small, sustainable farms serving the Chicago area by providing them with capital development grants of about $10,000. So far the foundation has given out almost $400,000 in grants. The hope is to foster an interchange between sustainable farmers and consumers, including farmers-market patrons and chefs.

Bayless said farmers add a lot to the community by coming into the city for the farmers markets.

“They enrich our lives,” he said. “They create that bedrock on which we  restaurant chefs can create great cuisine.”

Cleverdon defines local eating as the consumption of food that comes from states contiguous to Illinois. For Bayless, local is any place someone can drive to in a reasonable amount of time from Chicago.

Stegner stressed that it is almost impossible to eat entirely locally, but that every change contributes to the building momentum of the local market.

“You need to understand [that] with your dollar, you make a difference.”