While Bavette's Is Dark, River North's Dinner Map Kept Moving

Bavette's Bar & Boeuf served its last dinner before a temporary closure on Saturday, September 19. Its reservations page says it "will reopen in mid-November" and gives no specific date. That leaves about eight weeks without the room at 218 W. Kinzie St. As of October 10, about three of those weeks are behind us.

The rest of the neighborhood kept going. Between mid-August and the first week of October, River North added a riverfront steakhouse, a two-level Thai restaurant, and the first Midwest location of a Queens soup-dumpling house. A Wells Street restaurant that had lasted three days in March also opened a second time. One more opening is scheduled on Clark Street for December. The stretch between Bavette's last service and its return is when the neighborhood's dinner options are being redrawn, so this fall is about timing more than any one debut.

Three weeks into the pause on Kinzie

Bavette's has not said why it closed. Time Out reported on August 27 that the restaurant had given no reason for the temporary closure and had not named an exact reopening date. Nothing published since in the major Chicago outlets has added to that. For now, "mid-November" is the restaurant's own estimate, not a date on the calendar.

The way Bavette's handled reservations before the closure matters for planning a return visit. It released reservations 21 days ahead, every day at 9 a.m., and it took walk-ins at the bar, which serves the full menu. If it keeps that system when it reopens, tables for the first weeks back would start appearing about three weeks before the reopening date. That would put the first release in late October or early November, depending on when in mid-November the doors open. This is a projection from how the restaurant ran before. It has not announced how it will work after.

The pause matters because Bavette's has been one of the neighborhood's most dependable rooms for a serious dinner since it opened in 2012. Time Out notes its Michelin recognition and describes its menu as a French-leaning take on the classic steakhouse. Neighbors who had a standing reason to book that kind of dinner now have time to try what opened nearby.

A steakhouse opened on the river during the pause

The newest arrival is also the closest match in format. Carlyle Club opened Friday, October 2 at 316 N. Clark St., on the Chicago River. Eater describes its menu as classic American steakhouse cooking combined with Japanese technique and global flavors. Its own site says it occupies the Reid Murdoch Building, which has stood on the river since 1914. The dining room faces the water, and a patio sits on the Riverwalk.

It is a different kind of room from Bavette's. Eater's preview listed a 100-seat dining room, a 28-seat bar, and a sushi bar next to the dining room. The menu runs from raw bar and sushi through handmade pastas, dry-aged steaks, and seafood. Dishes include binchotan-grilled wagyu, ricotta pillows, lobster pie, and the Carlyle Burger. The sushi counter offers a smaller, more personal seating, and the bar has its own hand rolls. Las Vegas restaurateur Steve Gogolab runs the restaurant, and Jakob Peterson is chef and partner.

The biggest practical difference is the hours. Carlyle Club serves lunch every day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and runs happy hour in the bar area from 3 to 6 p.m. Dinner is 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 5 to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Bavette's dinner-only schedule left weekday lunch by the river open. This one fills it.

Some early details are still settling. Eater's September 30 preview expected an October 1 opening. Its October 7 roundup reported that the restaurant actually opened October 2. At ten days old, the menu and service are still new.

Gingie's second opening on Wells

Gingie at 707 N. Wells St. has the most unusual timeline of the season. The restaurant is a collaboration between chef Brian Lockwood and Boka Restaurant Group. It first opened in March 2026, and a kitchen fire closed it three days later. It reopened Saturday, August 29.

For most of the neighborhood, then, Gingie is effectively a fall opening even though its first date was in the spring. Very few people ate there in those three March days. The reopening menu brings back dishes from that short first run, including spicy tuna dip with sesame and avocado served with nori tapioca chips, and heritage half chicken with sansho pepper, pickled daikon, and shiso. It also adds tortelloni filled with Délice de Bourgogne cheese, corn, and black truffle, and a lobster-stuffed tomato with Calabrian chile.

Late summer on Hubbard and Ontario

Two openings in late August added a lot of seats a few blocks apart.

Tarra & Sura opened August 19 at 121 W. Hubbard St. It comes from restaurateur Michael Chen and executive chef Namo Chowcharoen and works as two venues in one building. Upstairs, the 95-seat Tarra serves regional Thai dishes such as Southern Thai crab curry and braised short rib red curry, in a room with a water wall and a mosaic of Thai-made tile. Downstairs, Sura is a speakeasy with velvet seating and cocktails built on Thai herbs, fruits, and spices.

Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao opened at 35 W. Ontario St. on August 29, the same day Gingie reopened. It is the Queens-born restaurant's first Midwest location. It seats 135, and diners can watch the soup dumplings being made by hand in the open kitchen. The signature order is the Lucky Six, a sampler of six dumplings with fillings that range from pork and crab to truffle, luffa shrimp, and scallop.

Those two restaurants add 230 seats between them, which is more than double Carlyle Club's 100-seat dining room. In size, the late-summer openings changed the neighborhood more than the October one did.

The calendar so far

Laid out in order, the openings fall around the Bavette's closure:

The F1 Arcade fits the pattern from a different angle. Block Club reported that it opened August 14 with racing simulators, bars, and dining all in one space at 1 W. Grand Ave. It is another place where a night out includes dinner.

Clark Street gets the next one

The calendar does not end when Bavette's reopens. Cha Chin, a 60-seat restaurant at 407 N. Clark St., is listed for early December. It is built around chifa, a cuisine that combines Cantonese cooking with Peruvian ingredients and flavors. Eater's fall preview names Chicago-based Exodo Hospitality Group as the group behind it. As of October 10 it is an announced project, not an open restaurant. Like every restaurant opening date, early December can move.

Cha Chin will be at 407 N. Clark and Carlyle Club is at 316 N. Clark, so two of the season's openings sit on the same street within one hundred-block of address numbers. If both dates hold, the period from late September to early December will have brought this part of River North two steakhouse-scale dinners on either side of Kinzie, one that reopens and one that is new, plus a 60-seat room serving a cuisine the neighborhood's recent openings have not covered.

The dates to watch are the Bavette's reopening announcement, which will also set when its reservations open, and confirmation of Cha Chin's opening day at 407 N. Clark St.

Openings like these shape how a block feels long after the first reviews. Nancy Tassone has watched River North's restaurant rooms and residential towers change together for more than 25 years. If you are weighing a move within the neighborhood or nearby and want a read on how a particular stretch of Clark, Hubbard, or Kinzie is changing, Nancy Tassone is glad to share what she is seeing. Let's Connect.