TACOS WITH FRIENDS: A Late Night Charity Taco Omakase at Cariño With James Beard Finalists, Chef Norman Fenton & Chef Sarah Thompson June 13, 2026
TACOS WITH FRIENDS: A Late Night Charity Taco Omakase at Cariño with James Beard Finalists, Chef Norman Fenton & Chef Sarah Thompson
Two of the country’s most defining voices in contemporary Mexican cuisine join together for a special James Beard Awards weekend edition of Cariño’s late-night taco omakase charity series, Tacos with Friends in Chicago.
On Saturday, June 13th at 10pm, Cariño’s Chef Norman Fenton (Best Chef: Great Lakes, Finalist 2026) will welcome in Chef Sarah Thompson of Las Vegas’s Casa Playa (Best Chef: Southwest Finalist 2025/26) for a special multi-course taco collaboration benefiting Latinos Progresando, a Chicago nonprofit providing immigration legal services and programs to support immigrant communities.
Cariño & Fenton are highly regarded for showcasing the complexity and depth of Mexican cuisine on the fine dining stage and have been recognized with some of the industry’s highest honors, including a MICHELIN star, and named one of America’s Top 50 Restaurants by The New York Times in 2025. He is also featured in Apple TV+’s Knife’s Edge: Chasing MICHELIN Stars (October 2025).
Thompson, who has worked her way some of the most revered kitchens including Cosme, Marea, Alder and more and was recently named StarChefs 2026 Rising Star Chef, is known for vibrant coastal Mexican food, an in-house nixtamalized masa program, and her work with the Women’s Hospitality Initiative in Las Vegas. Seats are extremely limited for this engagement and will go on sale at 10am sharp on Wednesday, May 27th on TOCK.
RSVP By: May 27
