Stroke Identified as Cause of Chef Trotter’s Death

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The chef Charlie Trotter died of a stroke linked to high blood pressure, a medical examiner’s report on his death earlier this month has found.

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• Charlie Trotter Dies at 54; Chef Made Chicago a Must(November 6, 2013)

“Neither drugs nor alcohol contributed to this death,” the Cook County medical examiner, Stephen Cina, said in a statement. “Additionally, there is no scientific evidence to indicate that recent travel contributed to his death, although there was evidence of a prior stroke.”

The 54-year-old chef had been found unconscious at his home in Chicago by his son, Dylan, on Nov. 5 and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy failed to determine an exact cause of death; toxicology and other tests identified the cause as a stroke.

His wife, Rochelle, said shortly after his death that he had had an aneurysm in January and had been taking medications prescribed by his doctors to control seizures, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

His flagship restaurant, Charlie Trotter’s, which opened in 1987 in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, helped put Chicago on the map as a city for serious eating. He focused on locally sourcing his ingredients, long before locavore became vogue, and was an early adopter of items like quinoa and the all-vegetable tasting menu. He closed the restaurant last year, saying he needed a break. But his cookbooks, television appearances and flock of trainees who withstood his mercurial temperament had already spread his style of cooking and helped establish a new generation of chefs.

“Charlie Trotter changed Chicago’s restaurant scene forever and played a leading role in elevating the city to the culinary capital it is today,” Rahm Emanuel, the mayor, said in a statement after his death. “Charlie’s personality mirrored his cooking — bold, inventive and always memorable.”