Charlie Trotter's

Charles "Charlie" Trotter (September 8, 1959 – November 5, 2013) was an American chef and restaurateur.

Trotter was born in Wilmette, Illinois and graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois. He attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois from 1977-1979, and then transferred to University of Wisconsin–Madison. Trotter started cooking professionally in 1982 after earning a political science bachelor's degree from UW–Madison.

For five years after college, he worked and studied in Chicago, San Francisco (at the California Culinary Academy), Florida and Europe. He is described as a self-taught chef. He opened his first restaurant in Chicago with his father, Bob Trotter, as his partner.

Trotter was the host of the 1999 PBS cooking show The Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter, in which he details his recipes and cooking techniques. He likened cooking to an improvisational jazz session in that as two riffs will never be the same, so too with food. He also wrote 14 cookbooks and three management books, and promoted a line of organic and all-natural gourmet foods distributed nationally.

Trotter was involved with his philanthropic Charlie Trotter Culinary Education Foundation and other causes. He was awarded the Humanitarian of the Year award in 2005 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He invited groups of public high school students into his restaurant as part of his Excellence Program two to three times per week: after eating a meal, the students were told how the food was prepared and the motivations of those preparing it.

Trotter also was unusual among celebrity chefs for his outspokenness in matters of ethics, most famously when he took foie gras off the menu in 2002 for ethical reasons. However, Trotter refused to be associated with the animal rights group Farm Sanctuary stating, "These people are idiots. Understand my position: I have nothing to do with a group like that. I think they're pathetic. … [S]ome of their tactics are crude and uncivilized even."