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player ready...For two years, residents of Bucktown have been hearing rumors that the team from the West Loop sensation Monteverde — chef Sarah Grueneberg and partners Jaime Canete and Rob Mosher — was planning to open their sophomore restaurant in the former Jack & Ginger’s at 2048 West Armitage Ave. They stayed mum even as a construction crew arrived for a gut renovation and erected a second building where the patio once beckoned. Some speculated they would open a pizzeria; others, a Southern restaurant to honor Grueneberg’s Texas heritage.
With a winter 2027 opening looming, the team is finally ready to divulge their plans. Trattoria Lo So will be, well, another Italian restaurant. No pizza, though the kitchen will be fully equipped with live fuel thanks to a new ventilation system — so expect wood-oven-fired casseroles and charcoal-grilled fish and meat. Pasta will again be the headliner, but this time they’re focusing on dried instead of fresh and will use exclusively the product from Mancini Pastificio Agricolo, an Italian manufacturer that grows all its durum wheat.
And the biggest news of all is that Monteverde’s rising-star executive chef, Bailey Sullivan, will head the kitchen. Sullivan has been running the day-to-day operations at Monteverde for some time and was recently a finalist on Top Chef.
“I’ll be involved as a creative director, but I want Bailey to shine,” Grueneberg says. The menu they’re devising in tandem will incorporate the cooking from several different parts of Italy, including Abruzzo, Lazio, Le Marche, and Umbria — i.e., all the central regions between more-referenced Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna to the north and Campania to the south.
Walking through the still-unfinished space, Grueneberg laid out her vision for the restaurant. A front vestibule under a skylight separates the two buildings — the original structure on the left and the new one built over the former patio. “You see this so often in Italy,” she says. “A family will have a restaurant and then move into the building next door and connect them loosely.”
Working with Karen Herold (who also designed Monteverde), Grueneberg envisions a finished space that will be “cozy, with lots of little nooks.” Unlike Monteverde with its open floor plan, high ceilings, and rollicking decibel level, Lo So will be quieter as befits a restaurant in a residential neighborhood. “Acoustics has been a big part of the investment and design,” she adds.
Guests can also expect tile floors, wood paneling, and bentwood bistro chairs, lending a kind of timeless neighborhood trattoria vibe. The partners are eager that the restaurant connects with the people who live nearby, much like Le Bouchon around the corner. The name, Lo So, may sound like a new coinage for a renovated warehouse district in a midsize city, but in fact it means “the one I know” in Italian: the trattoria I know.
Diners can expect a few more seats and slightly lower prices than at Monteverde. As for the rest of the menu, Grueneberg is still thinking it through. Perhaps grilled meat skewers as appetizers and soft-serve ice cream sundaes for dessert. “I’m also thinking of some pastas al forno, like a freeform lasagne. What would you like to see?”
Monteverde fans: Now’s your chance to speak up.
John Kessler is a freelance dining critic for Chicago magazine.