Spice by CMB
★
2853 N. Kedzie Ave., Logan Square
Dinner for two: $125 to $150
Tip: Desserts such as the Jamaican rum cake with coconut ice cream are portioned for sharing.
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My friends were trying hard not to oversell it, but there was a new Logan Square restaurant near their home that was making them happy. It had opened in a familiar space, one they knew from its previous tenants. They loved it first as Yusho, a destination for Japanese-inspired bar food. They liked its replacement, Jam, though they weren’t boozy brunch people. After the pandemic, they were excited about the tacos at Con Todo Cantina y Cocina, but it disappeared faster than food truck al pastor.
Now it was Spice by CMB, a restaurant that had organically emerged from CMB, the catering operation that has held the lease since 2023. Spice debuted with Sunday brunch in May 2025 and began dinner service this past February.
That’s when my friends got interested. They began exploring the brief menu, organized loosely around the theme of African diaspora cooking. They appreciated the gentle flavors and attention to detail; the food was solid rather than flashy, just what you want from your neighborhood spot. The grilled branzino with chermoula spice, they said, was always on point, as was the braised oxtail. Served in a rich gravy over cassava dumplings, the latter was hard not to order every time. Our friends also welcomed the way chef-owner Mychael Bonner cozied up the cavernous room by cutting off the back half with screens and setting the front with multihued art, dangling plants, and funky pendant chandeliers casting a soft light.
A former partner in Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants, Bonner had long developed menus and operations for the company’s various concepts. (He last showed up in the pages of this magazine nearly 20 years ago to tout the fresh seafood at Oak Brook’s Reel Club.) As he contemplated going into business for himself, African diaspora cooking was emerging, thanks to nationally recognized chefs such as Mashama Bailey and Kwame Onwuachi. This developing genre, which tells the story of a cultural migration, felt like it was something he could get behind as a Black chef, and also something to learn. “I realized I had never even tried jollof rice,” he said of the West African staple.
Alas, as my friends started falling for Spice, so was everyone else. With good word of mouth, it quickly became packed at all hours. And hectic. My friends waited an hour at the bar one evening for their dinner, only to find out the order had never been sent to the kitchen and would still be a long time coming, so they left. Bonner, mortified, reached out the next day to invite them back.
By the time I got around to visiting Spice, it was no longer the under-the-radar unicorn but a hot new sensation with an overwhelmed staff. We waited far too long past our reservation time for a table, received cocktails midway through the meal, and had entrées arrive piecemeal, leaving one poor soul to snack off other people’s plates. Servers would stand by the table and punch endlessly at their handhelds as if they were losing a game of Tetris, then come back 10 minutes later and ask us to repeat our order. It took forever to get water refills.
But the food is so good — not wow-wow, but layered with complementary flavors, seasoned with a sure hand, and utterly satisfying. Plus, the room is easy on the eyes, the crowd a diverse mix, and the vibe friendly both to people who dress up and to those who don’t.
The menu’s through line is the way Bonner filters a whole world of Afro-Caribbean traditions through his perspective as a journeyman chef. In his hands, Jamaican coco bread is a warm, buttery marvel, a brioche that thinks it’s a Parker House roll. The Guyanese beef stew called pepper pot arrives as a velvet-textured short rib over Yukon Gold mash, but it tastes true to form because Bonner uses cassareep, a bittersweet condiment made from the juice of the cassava root. The tender oxtail is indeed a must-order for the dumplings, which look like tapered Jamaican spinners but have the soft bite of gnocchi. Even a side order of Southern collard greens comes as a surprise, cooked until tender, then glossed with butter rather than swimming in potlikker.
Some of the smaller bites seem almost like passed hors d’oeuvres from Bonner’s catering catalog. Fine by me. I’d love to go to any party that served crispy black-eyed pea fritters with herb ranch or crackly bites of sweet potato with a sugared date crust. He also makes a burbly, cheesy crock of chopped Creole shrimp fondue with plantain chips that I am going to try to copy at home. We scraped up every rivulet of delicious gloop.
Not every dish falls into the African diaspora theme — Bonner is a chef more than a storyteller — so the menu plays to his lifetime of skills. At brunch he makes a fantastic Frisbee-size potato pancake and tops it with lush house-smoked salmon, dill hollandaise, herb salad, and a gushing egg. What a shame, then, that the eggs in a shakshuka, appealingly busy with kale and chickpeas, were set into rubber. A breakfast jollof plate also fell flat due to a timid and underseasoned rice, one of the kitchen’s few unforced errors.
My friends’ appreciation of the restaurant extends to the cocktails, which I found, overall, too sweet. The Pepp in Your Step, an old-fashioned with black pepper syrup, gave me sugar-rush Wisconsin supper club vibes. Next time I’ll get the spritzy and refreshing Whiskey Thyme.
And I will be back soon. I love the tenor of the cooking at Spice even as I enumerate the restaurant’s shortcomings. It needs a strong front-of-the-house manager to train the staff, and the reservation platform should leave more tables for walk-ins so the team can monitor the flow. And though I’m adding to it, I cannot wait for the hype to die down so this charmer can go back to being what Bonner envisioned: the ideal neighborhood restaurant.
John Kessler is a freelance dining critic for Chicago magazine.