Ambria Closing

Just received this via email... I know that it's a Lettuce but at one point it was one of the best.


Dish flash! – February 8, 2007
by Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

Change Is Good
After 27 years of thrilling patrons as a contemporary restaurant in a stately art nouveau room, it looks as if Ambria (2300 N. Lincoln Park West; 773-472-5959) will go in a new direction. Rich Melman, the chairman of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, isn’t showing his cards just yet, saying only, “We are excited about a new plan that we have for the Ambria space.” Gabino Sotelino, Ambria’s chef/partner, also dropped big hints. “There comes a point when you need to reinvent a restaurant,” Sotelino said. “We might remodel it, might change the concept. We are working on what to do about it.” Long a jewel in Lettuce’s crown, Ambria opened on July 1, 1980, and reached four stars in Chicago magazine by the end of the decade. (Currently the restaurant, with Christian Eckmann as chef de cuisine, gets three and a half stars.)

It’s been almost nine years since Sotelino’s space across the hall at the Belden-Stratford Apartments morphed from Un Grand Café to Mon Ami Gabi (773-348-8886)—a brilliant move that no one expected. “I brought the restaurant back to the potential it had in the beginning,” Sotelino says of that update, which spawned Mon Ami Gabi outposts in Oak Brook; Las Vegas; and Bethesda, Maryland—and more on the way in Virginia and Minnesota. “You need to make steps and create another 30 years,” Sotelino says. For now, Ambria will continue to operate as is, but we can’t wait to see what Sotelino and Melman have got up their sleeves.

Aaarrrrgh. I love Ambria. I'm sure they'll do something interesting, but I'll still miss Ambria. It has such wonderful food, and it is such a beautiful venue.

So, is it gone already, or do we have time to make a last pilgrimage?

Maybe they might consider adding a restroom.

Flip

Regarding adding a mens bathroom, I was told the hotel wouldn't let them add a bathroom due to the historical registry of the building. They have just remodled the mens room downstairs at least.