Two new spots from The Fifty/50 and Bleeding Heart Bakery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dave Andrews
Founder, Good Life PR
847.909.5511
dave@goodlifepr.com



Two new spots from The Fifty/50 and Bleeding Heart Bakery slated to open March 2011

CHICAGO (October 27, 2010) – Greg Mohr and Scott Weiner, co-owners of Wicker Park upscale sports bar The Fifty/50, are slated to open two new adjoining spots in West Town (1916-1924 W Chicago Ave) in March 2011.

Roots will the first bar in Chicago serving hand-tossed Quad Cities style pizza. Roots (located at the corner of Chicago and Winchester) and will also feature other Quad Cities food specialties, a massive create-your-own salad menu, an extensive Midwest-only beer list, and both infused-liquors and housemade sodas on tap.

Mohr and Weiner teamed up with Bleeding Heart Bakery’s Michelle Garcia and Vinny Garcia and will open Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café that will be located next door to Roots. This will be the first time Bleeding Heart will do sit-down dining and will breakfast and brunch items served all day. Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will also have a full-service bakery.

Both Roots and Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will feature open viewing kitchens.

Roots
Roots will be a casual neighborhood bar prominently featuring hand-tossed Quad Cities style pizza and will seat approximately 200 people inside the 6,500 square foot space. Roots plans to have a 50 seat outdoor patio as well.

Mohr – a Quad Cities native from Rock Island, IL – will bring the best from his childhood favorite Quad Cities pizza parlors and restaurants to Chicago in a comfortable bar setting utilizing simple, high-quality ingredients prepared fresh every day like he and Weiner do at The Fifty/50 in Wicker Park.

Quad Cities style pizza is of “regular” thickness; the pizza dough contains more malt than other styles and a unique spice mix; the crust is chewy yet airy from being hand tossed; the sauce is tomato-based with distinctive spices; toppings are served under the cheese; toppings like sausage are served crumbled instead of sliced; and pizza slices are hand cut into long strips with large scissors.

Roots’ kitchen will be glass-enclosed in will feature angled mirrors so patrons can have a full view of their pizzas being hand tossed and prepared.

Roots will feature about six Quad Cities specialty pizzas including two huge regional favorites like Taco Pizza (crumbled pork sausage, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, tortilla strips) and another with ground beef, Louis dressing, cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese, onion, lettuce, and pickles.

Pizza at Roots will come in three pie sizes and patrons can build their own pizzas utilizing about 20 different traditional meat, veggie, and cheese toppings.

Roots will also prominently feature made-to-order salads where patrons can choose from 40+ ingredients (lettuce mixes, vegetables, nuts & berries, cheeses, proteins, etc) and about eight different dressings. Patrons will be also able to view the salads being prepared in the kitchen due to the glass enclosure and angled mirrors as well.

The Roots food menu will also feature other Quad Cities pizza parlor favorites like calzone sliders (aka pizza puffs), larger soft and doughy calzones, gourmet sausages, housemade mozzarella sticks, and desserts like Rock Island Tiramisu (mascarpone and Kahlua flavored marshmallow fluff) and ice cream sandwiches in the vein of the famous “Chippers” from Whitey’s.

Roots will feature at least 16 craft beers on tap that will be exclusively from the Midwest. Roots will also have an extensive Midwestern-only bottled beer list. Look for Roots to also feature infused-liquors on tap, house-brewed sodas like root beer on tap, and specialty drinks that will be soda-based and spiked with alcohol served in classic pizza parlor 32oz Pepsi cups.

The food at Roots will be available for delivery and carryout. Roots will also have a late-night window serving pizza by the slice and whole pies.

Please note: Mohr, Weiner, and The Fifty/50 withdrew their involvement from The Cedar Hotel project last year.

Bleeding Heart Bakery & Cafe
Mohr and Weiner have teamed up with Michelle Garcia and Vinny Garcia of Bleeding Heart Bakery to open Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café that will be adjacent to Roots.

Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will be a two-story, 8,500 square foot organic breakfast & lunch spot and organic bakery that will seat about 125 people. There are also plans for outdoor patio seating.

Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will prominently feature a storefront studio window where patrons can view Vinny designing and decorating cakes that helped make Bleeding Heart Bakery (voted the No. 6 bakery in the country by TLC) nationally known thanks in part to their in participation in 12 Food Network Challenges. Also in the storefront studio window, patrons can prominently view Michelle creating chocolate, truffles and ice creams from scratch daily.

Also the entire kitchen of Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will be glassed-in and will be fitted with angled mirrors. Patrons can sit at a counter outfitted with stools and view everything going on in the kitchen from bread baking, to breakfast and brunch cooking, to cake making.

Michelle – who cooked and trained around the world from Chicago to San Francisco to Amsterdam – is excited to get back into the kitchen and create breakfast and brunch items that will be traditional American-style diner food with the Bleeding Heart twist.

Expect deep friend donut breakfast sandwiches (with choice of eggs, meats, and cheeses), hibiscus pancakes with warm lemon custard, Toad In The Hole (homemade breakfast sausage, Yorkshire pudding, tomato cofture), vegan smores pancakes, and about five different Eggs Benedict riffs (from a Fried Green Tomato Benedict with bacon hollandaise to a Mushroom Polenta Benedict with persimmon hollandaise and roasted red peppers).

Also, Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will also allow patrons to select certain favorite Bleeding Heart cake and cupcake flavors (think Red Velvet & Vegan Chocolate) and turn them into waffles or pancakes.

While Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will create and sell the traditional organic baked goods they’re well known for, they will focus more on finer American pastries utilizing French techniques incorporating seasonal and locally-sourced organic ingredients into the likes of macaroons, tarts, petit fores, French-style mouse cakes, French candies, barks, brittles, donuts, and more.

Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will also in-house bake about 12 different kinds of breads daily utilizing old school pre ferments and very few commercial types of yeast to develop a better depth of flavors. Expect Half Acre-infused beer bread, baguettes, cheddar bread with Organic Valley cheese, and brioche among many others. The breads from Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will be available for sale to patrons and wholesale to other restaurants as well.

Bleeding Heart Bakery & Café will feature a full Alterra Coffee bar and will turn some of its favorite cake and cupcake flavors (think the salted caramel “Veruca Salt”) into coffee drinks. Also expect farm-fresh and organic housemade sodas, organic beers, and fresh-squeezed organic juices that will also appear in Bloody Marys and mimosas.

For more information please contact Dave Andrews of Good Life PR at dave@goodlifepr.com and 847.909.5511.

FWIW, since this is my neighborhood, the Roots & Bleeding Heart Bakery project will be discussed at this coming Monday's East Village Association board meeting at Leona's Restaurant, 1936 W. Augusta, at 6:30pm. Hopefully, the new project will fare better than past attempts to develop this site.

East Village Association wrote:A restaurant at the Chicago & Winchester corner passed a May 2009 vote and city zoning change, only to lose development backing in the recession. It failed review at the start of the year as a potential drycleaning plant, and in 2007 as a condo site.

If it will be like 50/50 there should be no Roots on Winchester.

The proposal for a "massive" 200 seat plus 50 seat outdoor cafe serving 32 oz drinks spiked with liquor, with a late night food window and a large delivery presence is incompatible with a residential street.

nealchicago wrote:If it will be like 50/50 there should be no Roots on Winchester.

The proposal for a "massive" 200 seat plus 50 seat outdoor cafe serving 32 oz drinks spiked with liquor, with a late night food window and a large delivery presence is incompatible with a residential street.

NIMBY?

It looks like it would be on Chicago ave, which is pretty built up around there. If you want to get rid of noise, traffic, trash, etc. late at night train your sights on McDonald's on the other side of Damen there on Chicago.

nealchicago wrote:If it will be like 50/50 there should be no Roots on Winchester.

The proposal for a "massive" 200 seat plus 50 seat outdoor cafe serving 32 oz drinks spiked with liquor, with a late night food window and a large delivery presence is incompatible with a residential street.

Just the beginning. If this is basically your backyard, which it is mine, Chicago Bowl is coming.

East Village Association wrote:A 16-lane bowling alley, restaurant and performance space at 1850 W. Chicago got the unanimous support of East Village Association members in a Nov. 1 vote.

Chicago Bowl developer Peter Shapiro took questions from the 50 people attending in the ping-pong room at Happy Village, 1059 N. Wolcott. If 1st Ward Ald. Joe Moreno sponsors a Public Place of Amusement license, the venue at Chicago and Wolcott could open in early 2012.

Shapiro will make another presentation at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Commercial Club Park fieldhouse at 1845 W. Rice St., which shares an alley with the Chicago Bowl site. Shapiro suggested his business would support park improvements.

The former Chicagoan plans a renovation of the 23,000-square-foot AAA Distributing Co. auto warehouse along the same lines as his Brooklyn Bowl, a former factory in the gentrifying Williamsburg district of the New York borough. Shapiro came armed with a written testimonial from borough president Marty Markowitz.

The restaurant would be the first Blue Ribbon Restaurants location outside New York. Chicago favorites likely would join fried-chicken platters on the menu, with Midwestern beers on tap. Screens would project rock, folk and blues performances alongside the bowling lanes.

EVA planning co-chair Scott Rappe recommended that EVA not oppose the plan after noting concerns over the facade's lack of visual interest and access to a 29-space parking lot, which would adjoin Tecalitlan restaurant and raze the building between them at 1834 W. Chicago. The lot would be double-parked at peak hours and take deliveries during the day.

The business would employ upwards of 100 people including security. Hiring staff within walking distance would be a "priority," Shapiro said.

I stopped in the Bleeding Heart bakery today for some sweetness and was treated to a sampling of one of the french style mousse cakes they may feature in their new place. It was kinda like an opera cake and featured layers of caramel mousse, hazelnut jaconde, espresso ganache, salted carmel and whole candied hazelnuts. It was fantastic! It was easily one of the best desserts I have ever had, so I am pretty excited to see what else they have in store.

Bleeding Heart Bakery sounds great.

The Roots proposal is not inherently bad and drinking is legal but we all live in context. The location of the business as proposed may simply be inappropriate. The bulk of Roots proposed outdoor activities are on Winchester Avenue a residential street.

The proposal that is on the table is the proposal outlined in their press release. A late night pick up window (on Winchester), a 2 am bar, a 50 seat outdoor café (on Winchester) connected by garage door rolling windows open to the bar (again on Winchester), a large delivery presence (again on Winchester) pizza oven and kitchen exhaust that is not electric (again facing Winchester).

They should make modifications to the proposal to be good neighbors.

As for the NIMBY label. You don't have to roll over for every business plan that is dropped on the neighborhood.