- Michael Gebert
- Tim Cottini in the backyard that will soon be a steak house’s patio
It used to be that every neighborhood had its share of regular-guy steak houses—supper-club-type places where you could take your lady out to get cocktails and a pretty good steak in a grown-up atmosphere, without going downtown and spending the down payment on a new Buick. In Lincoln Square that place was Jury’s, for instance. But—as my deliberately retro description suggests—those places have mostly died out on the north side, replaced by sports bars or other more casual concepts. If you want that steak-house experience now, you practically have to go downtown and deal with the parking, the traffic, and the baller prices. Tim Cottini, chef at Lincoln Square’s farm-to-table family restaurant Fork, says, “A lot of the people in this neighborhood—which is an absolute gem of a neighborhood—don’t have that anywhere around here. You look at what everyone’s doing, everyone’s doing the gastropub, small-plate concept. We’re going to be bucking that trend.”
Turf must have surf, so Cottini has similarly sustainable ideas for that side of the menu: “We’re going to be focused on bringing in sustainable seafood, focusing a lot on the Great Lakes and things like that. We started using Amazing Shrimp [at Fork]; it’s farm raised just outside Gary, Indiana, it’s hormone and antibiotic free—the flavor of the shrimp is absolutely incredible.” Unlike a lot of steak houses, one thing Cottini says this one won’t do is blow off the vegetable side of the menu with a plate of steamed broccoli or creamed spinach. “These days, you have to something for the vegetarians, some gluten-free options, or a large party won’t come to your restaurant.” He buys vegetables from Nichols, Klug, and other familiar farmers’ market names, and his kitchen at Fork is used to offering or improvising vegetarian variations of their dishes (or entirely new ones).
