Nightwood

Photo: Erica Gannett

A LULA GROWS IN PILSEN Even with Djuna Barnes’s avant-garde, bohemian edge, it’s hard to imagine naming a restaurant after her book Nightwood: an oblique, controversial investigation into sexual deviance. But Jason Hammel, who co-owns Logan Square’s hipster-haunt Lula Cafe with his wife, Amalea Tshilds, makes a compelling case for the moniker of the couple’s second venture, where longtime Lula chef de cuisine Jason Vincent will execute simple, seasonal fare like chicken-liver pâté, wood-grilled trout with lentils and ham hock, spit-roasted chicken and hand-rolled pastas. “[It’s] a hallucinatory mystery that’s very Old World,” Hammel explains of Barnes’s book, “very evocative, with prose that’s gorgeous but not pretentious.” And like that hidden gem of a novel, “Nightwood is on a stretch of Halsted where when you first approach it, you see an industrial landscape, you see the highway, then you get this image of this glowing jewel box on the corner and the smell of burning wood from our grill,” says Hammel, who brought on Kevin Heisner (whose previous projects include Bar DeVille and Milk & Honey Bakeshop) to design the rustic, minimalist space. Initially, Nightwood will serve dinner only, Tuesday through Saturday, with plans to add weekend brunch and a late-night menu in the coming months. 2119 S Halsted St, 312-526-3385.

• More just opened restaurants and bars
• More Restaurants & Bars articles