The Best Restaurant News In Wicker Park Is Nineteen Years Old

On the same Friday that Wicker Park Fest would later open its gates on Milwaukee Avenue, a different kind of opening happened hours earlier a few blocks over on Division Street. At 7 a.m., Ann Sather flipped its sign, poured its first coffee, and started boxing cinnamon rolls at 1819 W. Division, a location it hasn't held in this stretch of the neighborhood since 2007.

Most of what's been written about Wicker Park and Bucktown this summer treats it as one long list of new restaurants. That framing misses the more interesting split happening on the ground. Some of what's opening here is genuinely new. A meaningful chunk of it is not new at all. It's the neighborhood pulling back names it lost years ago, and the two patterns are running side by side on the same handful of blocks.

Division Street Has A Long Memory

Ann Sather's return isn't really a story about breakfast. It's a story about unfinished business. Owner Tom Tunney ran a location of the restaurant on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park in the early and mid-2000s, and it closed in 2007 only after construction next door caused structural problems in the building. According to Block Club Chicago, Tunney said the city gave him 48 hours to evacuate at the time.

Nineteen years later, Tunney is back a few blocks away, in the former Yolk space at 1819 W. Division. The move was forced in part by circumstances outside the neighborhood entirely: the Belmont Avenue flagship in Lakeview, where Tunney served as alderman for two decades, is closing this year as a developer prepares to build an apartment building on the site. Division Street inherited the flagship's role, not by plan, but because Lakeview stopped being an option.

The new location keeps the bones of what made the original work. Murals and decor from the Belmont space have been recreated, the to-go bakery counter for cinnamon rolls carries over, and a sidewalk cafe will eventually add 40 to 50 seats to an indoor capacity of about 150, per the same Block Club Chicago reporting. Tunney's own read on the move is the shortest version of the whole story: "we're very familiar with the neighborhood, and I think the neighborhood is familiar with us."

Two More Ways The Neighborhood Shows Up Again

Ann Sather is the loudest comeback, but it's not the only one on the board this summer. Vajra, the Nepalese-Indian restaurant at 2039 W. North Ave., has spent the years since the pandemic toggling between takeout-only and dine-in service more than once. As of late July, it's back to weekend dine-in for good, according to general manager Dipesh Kakshapaty, speaking to Block Club Chicago. This isn't a restaurant returning to a place. It's a restaurant that never left, finally settling on a format that works, backed by a Michelin Bib Gourmand nod in both 2021 and 2022 for chef Min Thapa's cooking.

Estelle's, the North Avenue late-night bar that's been a Wicker Park fixture since the late 1990s, took a third path. It never closed and it isn't new, but it reopened late last November with a full interior remodel and a new menu, including a black bean and cheese "firecracker" and a cheese board from Beautiful Rind, according to Block Club Chicago. Three businesses, three different versions of staying power.

The Newcomers Aren't Returning To Anything

Set against that, the actual debuts in the neighborhood this summer look different, and it's worth naming them separately so the comparison holds. These are operators with no prior chapter here, moving into storefronts that used to be something else entirely.

• Bucktown Pizza, 1912 N. Western Ave., under the Western Blue Line stop, opened in early July in the former Oromo Cafe space. Owner Joe Smith has run pizzerias in the suburbs and on the East Coast, including near his hometown of Newark, but this is his first restaurant in the city proper.
• Jomon Sushi & Izakaya, 1858 N. Western Ave., opened less than a block from Bucktown Pizza in mid-July, taking over the former home of Wave Sushi and Sake, which closed last year.
• QXY Dumplings, 2018 W. Division St., is the second full-service location for a restaurant that's been a Chinatown staple since 2014, moving into a space that was previously El Bagel Cafe and Picante Taqueria. General manager Jesse Li told Block Club Chicago the Wicker Park kitchen would carry the same dumpling menu as the original, from halal lamb to crab roe, once city licensing cleared.
• Port Union, 1559 N. Milwaukee Ave., is chef Rodolfo Cuadros of Amaru's new modern American restaurant and cocktail house, built out in the same space that used to hold his own Bloom Plant Based Kitchen.
• Chicago Pickle Eatery and Craft & Carvery have both landed further down Milwaukee, adding bodega-style sandwiches and a carving station to a stretch of the avenue that used to hold different concepts entirely.

Notice what's not on this list: nobody here is walking back into a space they already knew. That's the entire distinction. Two blocks of Division Street and two blocks of Western Avenue are absorbing genuine new bets at the same time that they're welcoming back names the neighborhood already trusted. Both things are true of the same four-block radius in the same season, which says more about how much confidence operators have in this stretch of the city than either fact would on its own.

What's Left On The Calendar

Wicker Park Fest wrapped its three days on Milwaukee Avenue in late July, headlined by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, The Frights and Ovlov, with more than 150 brick-and-mortar shops setting up alongside the music, according to Block Club Chicago. If you missed it, the neighborhood's slower, smaller traditions are still ahead this month.

First Fridays, the neighborhood's free self-guided monthly art walk, falls on the first Friday of the month by name, which puts the next one on August 7. And starting August 30, Milwaukee Avenue closes to car traffic between the North/Damen intersection and Ashland from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the Meet Me on Milwaukee series, repeating on the last Sundays of September and October, according to the Wicker Park & Bucktown Chamber of Commerce.

None of this is dramatic. It doesn't need to be. A neighborhood that can support a Michelin-recognized restaurant finally settling into its format, a 19-year-old comeback landing on the same weekend as its biggest street festival, and six unrelated newcomers filling storefronts that used to be something else, all inside a few blocks, isn't cycling through concepts the way some Chicago corridors do. It's holding onto its own history while it grows, which is a harder thing to pull off than either growth or nostalgia alone.

If you've watched this corridor long enough to notice which storefronts keep changing hands and which ones don't, you already understand Wicker Park and Bucktown better than most market reports do. Fogel Slate Group spends its time in these blocks for the same reason residents do, because the details are worth paying attention to. Schedule a consultation whenever you want to talk about what any of this means for your own address.