The 21-month sandwich

On Tuesday, Decemeber 15, Graham Elliot invited a few chefs to 615 N State Street, the site of his about-to-open sandwich shop, grahamwich. The chefs—Grant Achatz, Ryan Poli, Giuseppe Tentori—arrived and instinctively stashed their bags and coats on the seats of the communal table in the back of the restaurant. Elliot saw this and experienced some minor panic: He realized that there was no place in the restaurant for people to hang their coats.

So after the chefs ate, Elliot ran to the store and picked up some coat hooks. At 10pm that night he started drilling the hooks into the wall.

Elliot left the restaurant at about midnight—“We got to take the paper [off the windows] as a team,” he says —and at 6am the following morning he was back. At 7am, 21 months after he first announced the project, grahamwich finally opened its doors.

Sitting in the back of the restaurant, his iPhone and iPad in front of him, Elliot reported that he felt “amazing.” Elliot’s flagship restaurant on Huron Street, graham elliot, is “going down a more serious road,” he said. “The check average has doubled since we opened.” But grahamwich is meant to capture the other side of Elliot’s personality—the “punk rock” side that his tattoos and occasionally testy tweets suggest. “It’s like our side-project band,” he says.

As for why the side project took so long to get off the ground, Elliot points to several factors. For one thing, the build-out was a more delicate process since the restaurant is in a landmark building (Tree Studios). And then there are Elliot’s other side projects—curating the food lineup at Lollapalooza, serving as a judge on MasterChef—that distracted from the opening. Did he put off opening grahamwich until MasterChef had aired so that he could capture the business of the reality television-watching audience?

“Not at all,” he says. “Who wants to open in December? It sucks.”

In the mornings, grahamwich will sell only coffee and pastries. The coffee is French press; the pastries come from Fritz. At 11am, the restaurant starts serving its entire menu: Sandwiches (turkey confit with sage mayo; smoked whitefish with raisin chutney), “snacks” (popcorn, chips, pickles), housemade sodas (lemon-lime, orange-ginger) and soft serve (Greek yogurt with glazed chestnuts). For now the restaurant is cash only, a restriction Elliot hopes he can maintain. “We want to discourage people from coming in and putting a stick in the wheel by ordering 30 sandwiches,” he says. “So we’re doing the Hot Doug’s thing.”

“I don’t think any corporate place could open a place like this,” he continues. Yet grahamwich may one day grow to compete with the likes of Potbelly. Elliot already has plans to open two more grahamwiches in 2011 (one in Wicker Park, one in the Loop). After that, he wants to open grahamburger. And then he wants to expand to L.A. with a restaurant that is something like what graham elliot started as—sit-down, but a la carte.

On the morning of grahamwich’s opening, though, he was—for the moment, at least—focused on 615 N State. Later that day he would sell 700 sandwiches to 500 customers; one particularly starry-eyed customer may provide a clue to what kind of person was in the crowds that day. “Welcome to the neighborhood, chef,” the customer said as he walked to the back of the restaurant to shake Elliot’s hand. “I’ll see you again today at lunch.”

615 N State St (312-624-9188). El: Red to Grand. Bus: 22, 36, 65. Breakfast, lunch, dinner (Mon–Sat). Average sandwich: $10.

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