Here’s your guide to what just opened, what’s coming soon and what’s no longer:
The Fifty/50 group, the restaurant and bar collective behind the Fifty/50, The Sixth, Roots Handmade Pizza and more, has opened its first fine-dining restaurant. Steadfast (120 W. Monroe St., www.steadfastrestaurant.com), a partnership with New York-based and James Beard-nominated Parts and Labor, is now serving lunch and dinner inside the new Kimpton Gray hotel in the Loop.
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At dinner, you’ll find a menu divided into snacks (think oysters, gougeres, chocolate-covered foie gras), medium plates, large plates and “for the table” dishes, big enough to share with a group. (Lunch has a similar menu, sans the “for the table” section.) Executive chef Chris Davies lived in Egypt for five years and was raised just north of Seattle, two places that influence his cooking.
For example, the Egyptian-spiced mussels with sumac apples and Calvados cream ($16) are flavored with a North African spice mix called ras-el hanout, which translates into “head of the shop” or, more loosely, top-shelf spices.
“Each person’s ras-el hanout mix is very unique,” Davies says.
On the baking side, pastry chef Chris Teixeira has six types of bread available: classic pain rustique; orange sourdough that Teixeira said came from a culture he’s been developing for about seven years; lavender pretzel; flamiche topped with creme fraiche, sauteed leeks and bacon; garlic cracker; and rye multigrain.
If a restaurant is going to charge diners for bread, he says, it has to be special. Steadfast charges $8-$10 a basket, which comes with violet-pickled cauliflower, red wine pickled onions or garden pickles.
The pickling has roots in Teixeira’s childhood in Portugal. “My grandfather used to make wine. Whatever wine at the end of the season had gone bad would turn into vinegar, so we would use that to preserve any summer vegetables that we had grown,” he says.
Cocktails come from Benjamin Schiller of The Sixth and Berkshire Room. Read more about the bar program here.
Steadfast seats about 104 inside, with a 12-person outdoor patio. The restaurant is broken into four distinct sections (counting the bar), and each has a different feel — the most noteworthy of which is an all-marble room that’s a nationally protected landmark.
“We’re thinking of doing tasting menus (in the marble room),” Davies says. “It’s absolutely stunning.”
Other news:
Analogue closed its doors two months after its founders and chef left, reports DNAinfo. The closure was announced via a Facebook post.
In Lincoln Park, Strings Ramen is no more. The State Revenue Department has revoked the restaurant’s business license for “non-compliance with Illinois tax laws,” Eater reports.
A new wine shop is coming to Hyde Park. Steven Lucy, the owner of Open Produce and Cornell Florist, announced the project is in the works at the old O’Gara and Wilson bookstore location (1448 E. 57th St.), DNAinfo reports.
In case you missed it:
Umami Burger will open its second Chicago location in the West Loop.
Southern restaurant Dixie, from the owner of Lillie’s Q, opens Tuesday in Bucktown.
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