Storyteller

Chicago-based reporter and producer, Monica Eng. (Image by Alex Garcia)

As usual, Monica Eng, ’91 LAS, was really busy. She’d just finished watching The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones interview with Who guitarist Pete Townshend and was filing fixes for her next day’s story on Axios, the online newsletter. We talked in the backyard of her Chicago Lincoln Park neighborhood home with only occasional interruptions from her editor. Eng is a Chicago reporter for Axios and loves it.

“It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s creative,” she says, which is an apt description of Eng. “Every morning we say, ‘What are the five stories we’re doing?’ Here’s a tasty breakfast sandwich, here are the promises the mayor didn’t keep, here’s why the property taxes are so high, here’s a new play.”

The stories she’s written in the past month range from a pizza carnival to a pickleball tourney to the controversial firing of Chicago’s Dept. of Public Health Commissioner, Allison Arwady. Along with food and politics, health tops her list of interests. The story she’s just filed is on a COVID-19 spike in Chicago. Every few minutes she stops to answer a query on her computer. “The reason it’s … 4 … percent,” she says aloud as she types, “is … I … rounded … up. I wish I could just call this guy on the phone!”

Eng likes talking. Before joining Axios, she was a staple on WBEZ public radio’s Curious City. Was it a rocky pivot from audio to print?

“It was difficult at first,” she admits, “because I love telling stories. A lot of people think I’m still broadcasting because they rerun my stories on Curious City, and I think, ‘That’s me!’ But we’re all radio professionals at Axios, and we’re also writing.”

Axios got launched by a trio of Politico journalists in 2017 and was based in Virginia. Then they decided “to get out of D.C.,” as Eng puts it, and started in a half dozen smaller cities, including Denver, Des Moines, Iowa, and Charlotte, N.C. In 2021, they contacted Eng for their first big city launch in Chicago.

“I thought it was not real journalism; I don’t like newsletters,” Eng says. “They said, ‘You can write whatever you want,’ so I jumped ship.”

Axios has a broad agenda—food, politics, culture—and publishes its quintet of stories every day and twice on Thursday. That’s enough to keep anyone busy, even Eng. She also co-hosts a podcast, Chewing, and teaches a course at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. And, oh yes, she just published a book, Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, co-written with David Hammond, a local food journalist. Two days after our meeting at her home, she’s signing copies of the book at the Harold Washington Library Center auditorium.

Monica Eng discusses her recent book, Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites, co-authored with David Hammond, during Pygmalion Lit Fest at the Analog Wine Library on campus. (Image by Terry Farmer)

“It’s been crazy,” she admitted during her presentation with Hammond, one of almost two dozen she’s done on behalf of the book. “I don’t have time to wash my hair!”

Hammond, who has known Eng for 20 years, is one of her many fans.

“She amazes me with her projects. She’s always doing something. Interviewing the mayor, going to another food event, judging a poker contest. And she does it all with such a sense of humor and timing. She’s a pro.”

Eng has hardly paused to catch her breath since the age of 15 when she signed on as a copy clerk for the Chicago Sun-Times features department. This was not entirely an accident. Eng’s mother was dating Roger Ebert, ’64 MEDIA, who asked her if any of her kids wanted a summer job. All they’d have to do was answer the phone and sort the mail.

“I thought, ‘I could do that,’” Eng says. “And I loved it. It was the most fun ever. The people were the most fun ever. Roger and I even had the same birthday, June 18. It was providence! He told me, ‘You’re a natural, you’re a born journalist, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to the U of I and join The Daily Illini. You’re going to study English and take your junior year abroad.’ They were all the things I wanted to do.”

Their connection lasted long after Ebert and her mom parted ways. “He told me he was going to come down to Homecoming to watch Fighting Illini football, and I’d have tickets. Each June 18, we met and celebrated our birthdays until the year he died.”

“[Roger Ebert] told me, ‘You’re a natural, you’re a born journalist, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to the U of I and join The Daily Illini. You’re going to study English and take your junior year abroad. Luckily,” says Eng, “they were all the things I wanted to do.”

Over the decades that Eng has reported on Chicago’s food and restaurant scene, a lot has changed, she says. It used to be that the high-end Michelin-starred places like Charlie Trotter’s got all the attention. But this year, Kasama, an upscale Filipino restaurant, won the James Beard Foundation Award for excellence. Still, Eng is equally drawn to “hole in the wall places” like Uncle Mike’s, another Filipino restaurant a mile away from all the “haute stuff.”

It’s those restaurants—or diners—that are the subject of her and Hammond’s book, which has gained added attention, thanks to the Hulu hit, The Bear.

“I think The Bear has done good things for Chicago,” Eng says, “though I could do without some of the screaming. I don’t need to watch that constant bickering. We’ve got teenagers at home.”

The “we” is Eng and her partner, Colin McMahon, former editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune. The teenagers, “actually they’re now in college” are his younger son and her daughter, who’s beginning her second year at Illinois.

“She’s headed for journalism,” Eng says, but adds that her daughter has had a tough start because of a big piece she wrote on an alderman running for office. “She did a terrific job; she did so much work, it was almost painful,” Eng says. Unfortunately, the piece was published too late to impact the vote, and the alderman lost the election. Eng reflects on her daughter’s frustration when she talks to journalism classes, which she does all the time.

“I ask them, ‘Why are you doing this? There are no jobs, none that pay a living wage,’” Eng says. “Those [that do pay] are few and far between.” She also tries to give her daughter perspective. “Not every story is a saga.”

Although Eng has had her share. One of her first major features was on Iris Chang, ’89 MEDIA, whose 1997 book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII, exposed the wartime atrocities in that city. “She had everything going for her,” Eng says of Chang. “She was a bright, beautiful woman with a son she loved so much, and then she put a gun to her mouth and killed herself.” Some thought the Japanese were responsible, says Eng, but the cause was mental illness, a “shameful illness even 20 years ago.”

“Her freshman year at Illinois she wrote features, film criticism and music stories for The Daily Illini.”

Later, Eng vowed never to take another big freelance assignment again after she wrote an article about a man who had surgery to become a woman.

“I talked to her wife and asked difficult questions. I made her cry, but I don’t want to make people cry. I don’t want to ask about hormones or surgery,” Eng recalls. “Oh my god, it changed my life. I hated that it took so long and was so emotionally difficult, but those are the stories that [prompt] people to write to you and tell you [that your article] changed their life.”

Eng is proud of her stories that have changed people’s lives—sometimes in unexpected ways. Recently, she was driving through Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood with her mother and daughter when she spotted a postal worker dressed in striking vintage clothing.

“I said, ‘I’m jumping out to interview him.’ It looked like he came out of the 1950s. ‘Yeah, I’m the new mailman,’ he told me. ‘I just want to represent the postal service well. I look for vintage clothing and try to look dapper.’ It was one of the most-read [Axios] stories of the year.”

Eng has been jumping to cover interesting stories for a long time. Her freshman year at Illinois she wrote features, film criticism and music stories for The Daily Illini. Sophomore year, she contributed theater and film reviews to a cable TV show called Critics Choice. As a senior, she wrote for The Daily Illini where her editor was Dave Eggers, MEDIA ’03, who would go on to author the novel The Circle.

She went on to jobs at the Sun Times and Tribune before switching to radio and joining WBEZ as a producer and reporter.

In addition to her work on the Axios online newsletters, Eng co-hosts Chewing, a food and health podcast. (Image by Alex Garcia)

“Monica’s creative energy, doggedness and enthusiasm are remarkable,” says Steve Edwards, WBEZ’s chief content officer during Eng’s tenure. “Her passion and curiosity are infectious, and that comes through powerfully in her writing and reporting.”

There’s not a lot in her DNA to suggest a journalism gene, but it’s a good guess where her interest in food started. Eng’s great grandfather immigrated from China to Chicago in 1911 and began opening chop suey restaurants. At his peak, he had 12 locations, including the world’s largest chop suey restaurant, The Golden Pumpkin, which seated 1,000 patrons and boasted a full jazz band, in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood.

On her mother’s side, Eng comes from Peruvian and Puerto Rican grandparents, which might explain her eclectic taste in cuisine.

“I like hole-in-the-wall places. I don’t want to wait two hours for a breakfast sandwich like Sydney does in The Bear,” Eng says. But her interest in restaurants goes beyond who serves what and how it tastes. A favorite Axios piece was a story she did on surcharges.

“What they write on your bill is not at all transparent,” she says. “It can be 2 percent or 20 [percent], which is actually against the law. There’s no strict regulation, so people can tack on as much as they want.”

Although Eng has spent her entire professional life in Chicago, she’s no provincial. When she was in her 20s, she joined her then-husband for a year-and-a-half in Uzbekistan where he was doing research for his dissertation.

“It was super interesting. It was just after the fall of the Soviet Union, and there was no infrastructure,” Eng says. “Russia had stopped sending coal, and in the tiny town where we stayed, there was no way for people to heat their homes or school.”

She experienced a different kind of deprivation during the time she spent in Nicaragua after college. The developing world was a revelation. “You ask, ‘Where’s the bathroom’ and a person says, ‘Somewhere in that field,’” Eng says.

Her focus on people spills over  naturally to politics. Shortly before the April 2023 Chicago mayoral election, Eng hosted a debate at a local bar and music venue, and almost the entire slate of candidates was there—with varying degrees of comfort.

“All of the polls said [Paul] Vallas was winning, and he looked really happy, jolly and even making jokes in his talk. Chuy [Garcia’s] heart wasn’t in it,” says Eng. Brandon Johnson “seemed really nervous. Like everyone, I was shocked that he won. I’d written three stories that the race was too close to call.”

“I love that he’s so idealistic,” Eng says of Johnson, who’s only a few months into his term as mayor. “Though I’m not sure where he’s going to come up with money to pay for all of his incredible programs. I’m also a little angry he’s been so unavailable to the press. He just gave a press conference, and said he’s been busy talking to people. Well we’re a way to talk to a lot of people.”

And there’s no sign Eng is about to stop. In addition to her work at Axios and a new season of her Chewing podcast, she’s working on another book. It’s a middle-school novel set in the 1950s about a girl whose father owns the city’s biggest chop suey restaurant.

“It’s my last big project,” she vows.