The river first

The Fox River does not feed the restaurant, but it set the tone. The first menu was built around what arrives on ice: Gulf shrimp, whitefish, octopus, lobster three days a week. Everything else on the menu was chosen because it belongs next to those things.

That rule still holds. When something is added to the dinner menu, the question is whether it would make sense at a table that ordered the ceviche first.

Plates come when they are ready, not when the ticket says. Water is refilled before you notice. Nobody clears a plate while someone is still eating from another one.

The staff are paid to know the menu and the wine list, and most of them have been here longer than the paint.

Sixty-two seats in a room that used to store rowboats. We kept the brick, the beams and the height, and added leather booths, low brass light and a bar that faces the window.

It is a room for a two-hour dinner. If you need to be somewhere at eight, tell us when you reserve, and we will pace it.