Longman & Eagle, the Logan Square restaurant that celebrated its sweet sixteen this year, still serves wild boar sloppy Joes, but new executive chef Alex Swieton revels in vegetables with serious hardcore style.
“It’s the same, but different,” said Swieton when I asked her how she describes the business since taking over the kitchen in August 2025. “Because it’s the restaurant that I fell in love with many years ago.”
Many more years ago, Evelyn Beatrice Longman designed and sculpted the reliefs that ring around the base of the Illinois Centennial Monument. The eagle-topped column, which rises above the neighborhood square, commemorated a century of statehood in 1918. Nearly 100 years later, the partners best known at the time for the live music venue Empty Bottle would open the Longman & Eagle gastropub in 2010.
It developed a reputation for meaty Michelin-starred bar food with rare whiskey pairings served loud and late into the night, with a six-room inn upstairs to crash.
“We’ve moved to a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which is my comfortable space to be,” said Swieton about the guide’s award for restaurants that serve exceptional food at great value. “I like cooking food for regular everyday people.”
A few items will stay forever, including that sloppy Joe, the double smashburger and a roasted bone marrow with an optional whiskey luge.
The most punk rock move at the moment though might be ordering all their salads in our cyclospora era, which I dared to do since they’re sourcing from local farms.
A crisp cucumber salad reveals unexpected complexity with raw and grilled cukes, plus pickled pops of fennel, all dressed in a fragrant green melon vinaigrette over a velvety basil creme fraiche.
“That’s maybe one of my favorite things I’ve ever made,” said Swieton. “And the vegetable dishes are always bangers.”
She starts with peak season cucumbers from Nichols Farm & Orchard in Marengo, about 60 miles northwest of Chicago.
“My favorite ones are the Armenian cucumbers, which are big, giant and curly with a striped skin,” said the chef. “Then lemon cucumbers, which are small, baseball-sized and yellow with a tiny bit of a citrusy flavor, and we cut those up like lemons, which is cute.”
She also gets fennel from Nichols Farm, then shaves and pickles the licorice shards. They make the creme fraiche in-house, with pickled Fresno chiles tossed in for a hint of heat, as well as kombu salt, with Maldon and fennel pollen. She sprinkles that elusive umami seasoning on top, then finishes with more fresh basil and feathery fennel fronds.
“We just take it up a level,” said the chef. “So you know you’re not just eating cucumbers.”
Carnivores will find a beef heart tartare that stole my heart by brilliantly transforming the classic French dish with tender bits of pristine organ meat and a smoky trout tonnato-style sauce, served with dramatic planks of crispy beef fat crackers.
“Beef prices are crazy,” said Swieton. “And I was trying to think of a different way to do it.”
She tested the tartare with a beef heart from Slagel Farm in Fairbury, about 100 miles southwest of the city.
“I tried to do something weird with it,” said the chef. “So it’s kind of like classic tartare, but also a vitello tonnato situation, with a super Midwest flair.”
She dresses the raw beef traditionally with cornichons, capers and shallots, but then binds it all with the mayonnaise-style sauce infused with house-smoked trout instead of tuna.
When I went for dinner on one of two visits, Mom Chu, who turns 93 this year, ate so much of the tartare and crackers that my brother and I were shocked at her ravenous appetite.
Pork ribs with a seasonal cherry char siu-inspired glaze, bright green onion relish and a loaded almond crunch were another favorite of Mom Chu, who’s Cantonese and an amazing lifelong cook.
“A 90-something-year-old Chinese grandma said it was good,” said Swieton, laughing. “I’m done.”
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The ribs come from Kilgus Farmstead, also in Fairbury, and better known for their dairy.
“But they do have a lot of really good pork,” said the chef.
She starts with a dry rub.
“I call them Chicago-style ribs,” said the chef about her take on the historic falling-off-the-bone variation. “It’s the way that I grew up eating them, because no one had a smoker or anything like that.”
She wraps them in foil, cooks in the oven for three to four hours, then sears them on pickup.
The sticky char siu glaze begins with cherries from Mick Klüg Farms in Saint Joseph, Michigan, about 90 miles away.
“We cook them down low and slow,” said the chef. “There’s a lot of five-spice powder in there, hoisin, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and all the color is coming from the cherries.”
The bewitching almond crunch, I could eat alone, spooned over rice. She mixes fried garlic and fried shallots with Marcona almonds, sunflower seeds, mushroom powder and a relish of charred spring onions from Nichols with herbs, shallots, capers and oil.
“I won’t keep the ribs around forever,” said Swieton. “I just wanted to do them for the summer.”
Speaking of the fleeting season, a summer squash dish hides a fantastic fried zucchini fritter under grilled and shaved baby squash from Nichols, plated on a canvas of vibrant green hari chutney vinaigrette, then dotted with pop art of coconut curry and garlic labneh.
The burrata, a beloved menu mainstay, changes every two months or so, and currently offers a pouf of house-made cheese with lovely grilled peaches, a sweet and sour eggplant caponata plus their extraordinary focaccia on the side.
But the simple greens salad with buttery lettuce leaves from Werp Farms in Buckley, Michigan, nearly 300 miles north, seems most extravagant of all, barely dressed with a delicate rosé vinaigrette.
A radiant nonalcoholic Calamansi Crush drink by bar manager Jay Cullen balances the acidity of the calamansi shrub with orange and lime plus a touch of salt.
And the L&E espresso martini subtly upgrades the ubiquitous cocktail with Meletti coffee liqueur from Italy, small-batch Wheatley vodka from Buffalo Trace Distillery in Kentucky, and cold brew from Hexe Coffee on the outer edge of Roscoe Village.
A spirit-free Noway Rosé, on the other hand, sipped so sweet, despite its rosé shrub and possibly too much of a good thing with Jack Rudy nonalcoholic tonic syrup. Heirloom tomatoes, finally in season, may be too simple even seasoned with an ambitious tomato water koji and tomato ponzu. Steak frites, with a picanha cut cooked perfectly medium rare as suggested and sauced with an L&E Sazerac Rye au poivre, was simply outshone by impeccable pommes allumettes with bone marrow aioli for dipping. A Nashville-style “hot chicken” egg salad toast, a weekday lunch sandwich with promising chicken skin crumbs, loses the coveted fried chicken skin texture sadly.
The Turkish eggs, however, reclaim breakfast beautifully with poached eggs, garlic conserva yogurt, urfa biber brown butter and more of that exquisite focaccia.
“They are what I would like to eat for breakfast,” said Swieton.
That says something since she previously worked at Kanela Breakfast Club.
“They had six locations and I was kind of like running them all,” said the chef. “Then the pandemic happened.”
She applied at Longman & Eagle for her dream job as brunch sous chef and got it. She became the dinner sous a year or so later, then the chef de cuisine after another year or so. When previous executive chef Brian Motyka left, Swieton became the first woman appointed as executive chef in the restaurant’s history.
After five years working at Longman & Eagle, she still makes several kinds of bread every day, which is highly unusual even for Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris.
Swieton and Motyka started the bread program together. Motyka brought his sourdough starter, now about 15 years old.
“All of our breads are pretty much sourdough based,” said Swieton. “From that starter.”
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And the fantastical focaccia endures, golden and featherlight.
Sous chef Haley Horton makes most of the desserts, currently featuring a rich peanut butter pie in a thick pretzel crust, plus a dish of flawless Klüg Farms berries with creme diplomate, meringue and tiny elderflowers.
But Swieton created the french fry ice cream, with a chocolate “Magic Shell” and malted chocolate mousse.
I am a bit of a hater on the popular Frosty and fries, and that’s unlikely to change, but I loved this thoughtful dessert.
“I think you’re going to be a little surprised again by the insane effort that we go through,” said the chef. “We make a bunch of french fries and cook them really hard, then pour Kilgus milk on top, and that soaks overnight.”
They strain out the fries and cook the ice cream base, then spin that into the ice cream.
“The malted chocolate mousse is meant to taste like a Wendy’s Frosty,” said the chef. “We add a bunch of malted milk powder and a couple of secret ingredients.”
In addition to the magical shell with a caramelized milk chocolate, more matchstick fries add texture.
“It’s like my perfect dessert,” said Swieton. “I’m not really a sweet sweets person, but I really do like a sweet salty kind of thing.”
Especially on an idyllic summer day or night on the dog-friendly patio on the side street sidewalk where I sat on a quiet weekday and a somewhat chaotic weeknight. Server Glennister Wells skillfully sped up the pace when I requested at lunch. But genial colleague Miguel De Luna was unfortunately slowed down by the kitchen at dinner. The chef explained later that a cook had called out and a cooler went down. They should have told me and the other tables waiting, but instead sent out complimentary dishes. We received an extra order of the cherry char siu ribs, which was confusing, but Mom Chu was happy and that’s what matters after all.
Longman & Eagle
2657 N. Kedzie Ave.
773-276-7110
Open: Daily; weekdays from 11 a.m., Monday to Thursday until 11 p.m., Friday until 1 a.m.; weekends from 9 a.m., Saturday until 1 a.m, Sunday until 11 p.m.
Prices: $16 (cucumber salad), $17 (beef heart tartare with beef fat crackers), $19 (Turkish eggs with focaccia), $20 (summer squash), $26 (pork ribs), $11 (french fry ice cream), $12 (nonalcoholic Calamansi Crush drink), $16 (L&E espresso martini cocktail)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on one level
Tribune rating: Excellent, three stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; zero stars, unsatisfactory.
Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
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