The Evanston RoundTable quoted Beverly Kim saying, "I think Evanston is, from what I hear, an amazing community to be a part of," as word first got out that she and her husband, chef Johnny Clark, were eyeing an Evanston address. By late July the two had made it official. Kim and Clark are not first-time restaurateurs chasing a trend. They are James Beard Award winners who already run two respected spots in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood. When people with that kind of pull start scouting Evanston addresses, it is worth asking what they actually found here, and where.
The answer turns out to be less about concepts and more about real estate. Look closely at the restaurants that have opened or been announced in Evanston this year and a pattern emerges that has nothing to do with cuisine. Almost none of them are new construction. They are all moving into buildings that were already standing, already known, and in most cases already loaded with history.
An Alley With a Theater Behind It
Kim and Clark's new project, officially named Alleyway Grill on July 22, will occupy 1710C Sherman Ave in Bookman's Alley, tucked inside the Varsity Building, a former movie theater that now holds apartments upstairs and retail and restaurant space at street level. The spot sits behind a recently shuttered Guzman y Gomez, in a building that has been part of downtown Evanston's fabric for decades under different uses.
The financing tells its own story. According to the Evanston RoundTable's reporting on the project, the deal came together after local restaurateurs Brown and Rogin raised investment from roughly 15 different Evanstonians, framing it as a chance to put money directly into downtown rather than waiting for an outside developer to do it. Kim has her own history with the town. She attended Kendall College back when its campus was still in Evanston. Clark grew up in Cincinnati and trained in New York. The project is a bet on downtown's existing fabric, rather than on a blank lot or a ground-up build. Alleyway Grill is aiming for a Midwestern menu built around live fire cooking, and Clark has already said the Evanston Farmers Market will shape what ends up on the plate. The restaurant is expected to open in early 2027.
A Different Bet, a Few Blocks From Downtown
While Alleyway Grill was still being teased, a different kind of restaurant opened quietly at the other end of Evanston's food map. Burl, at 2545 Prairie Ave near the Central Street corridor, is the first independent project from Rachel Canfora-Carlin and Tom Carlin, a husband-and-wife team with backgrounds at Hogsalt and One Off Hospitality. They opened on January 30, a date restaurant owners typically avoid because January is the industry's slowest month, and the tables filled anyway.
Burl did not happen because a developer built a restaurant space and went looking for tenants. The Carlins found the building, a distinctive triangular structure, while they were house hunting in Evanston. Tom Carlin has said he was captivated by it on sight and started imagining what it could become well before he had a business plan. Central Street already had Hewn bakery, The Spice House, and Backlot Coffee anchoring a casual food scene. Burl offers a new dining option for Evanston and Wilmette residents, including some who had previously lived in neighborhoods like Roscoe Village or Wicker Park. Burl sources Catalpa Grove lamb, Slagel Farm beef, and Janie's Mill flour, and pours a surprising number of Michigan wines alongside it.
The Hotel That Keeps Reinventing Itself
The Hilton Orrington offers the clearest version of this same story. Land & Lake Cafe opened there on April 22, becoming the third dining concept inside that one hotel, joining the Evanston Corner Bistro and the plant-based restaurant "17." Nothing about the building changed. What changed was the program inside it. LM Restaurant Group co-owner Nicole Quaisser told Evanston Now the addition brings the Orrington "full circle" to what used to operate there years ago, and the timing tracks a real shift in guest behavior: happy hour used to be the hotel's biggest business driver, and now it's breakfast and lunch. The Corner Bistro actually dropped its own breakfast service to make room for Land & Lake, which suggests the hotel is not adding capacity so much as reallocating it toward what people actually want at 8 a.m. now.
Storefronts Move Faster Than Buildings
Not every new opening required a renovation story. On the 1600 block of Sherman Ave, Newyolk Town, a Korean sandwich shop built around scrambled egg dishes, opened in a standard storefront in March. It sits nearly across from Wafflavor, a Korean dessert shop, and next to Paris Baguette, whose menu leans on the same culinary tradition even though the chain's name doesn't. None of these required a building with a past. They needed an empty storefront and a lease, and downtown Evanston apparently has enough foot traffic that those leases move quickly.
That contrast is the useful part. When a restaurant just needs counter space and a kitchen, it takes a Sherman Ave storefront and opens in weeks. When a restaurant wants to be a destination, a theater lobby, a hotel dining room, a building someone fell in love with while looking for a house, does more work than a fresh build ever could. Evanston's restaurant growth this year has run on both tracks at once, and neither one involved a new building going up.
Soul & Smoke fits somewhere in between. The barbecue and soul food business started as an Evanston catering operation before the pandemic and has now grown into an expanded space, with a grand opening on September 1. It's a company that built its name here first and is now claiming more square footage to match.
What's Actually Open Right Now
For anyone deciding where to eat this month, here's where things stand as of mid-September:
- Burl (2545 Prairie Ave) is open and has been since January, with a 75-seat dining room built around wood-fired cooking.
- Land & Lake Cafe (inside the Hilton Orrington) is open daily from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., serving the breakfast and lunch crowd the hotel's other restaurants stepped back from.
- Newyolk Town and Wafflavor, both on the 1600 block of Sherman Ave, are open for Korean street food and dessert.
- Soul & Smoke celebrated its expanded location's grand opening September 1.
- Alleyway Grill is still in development, targeting an early 2027 opening in Bookman's Alley.
The Season Is Closing, Not the Momentum
Downtown Evanston's Thursday Night Markets at Fountain Square wrapped their eighth season on September 3, and the Downtown Summer Sounds concert series closed the same week. One event still remains on the calendar: the last Cars & Coffee gathering of the year is set for September 20, back on a blocked-off stretch of Sherman Avenue. It's a good excuse to walk past Bookman's Alley one more time before winter construction crews start turning Alleyway Grill from an announcement into an actual restaurant.
None of this required new buildings, new blocks, or new development to happen. It required people who already knew the town, or fell for a specific building in it, deciding to bet on what was already there. That's a different story than most restaurant roundups tell, and it says something quieter but more durable about how downtown Evanston actually grows.
If you're watching Evanston's neighborhoods change and wondering what that means for the housing market around them, Amy Garvey has spent years tracking exactly this kind of local detail across Evanston and the North Shore. Let's Connect.
