While Glenview has an impressive roster of restaurants
GLENVIEW, IL — Even with more than 50 restaurants to his credit, celebrity chef Fabio Viviani admits that he still gets a case of the jitters every time he introduces a new concept eatery in a new place.
Viviani, whose Illinois-based eateries include Bar Siena, Prime & Provisions, Bombobar, and Chuck Lager, recently opened the newest Chuck Lager location in Glenview. The concept, which he describes as an elevated American tavern and sports bar, provides the perfect blend of casual dining with Viviani’s own take on comfort food that diners — before now — may not have found in their culinary journeys.
While Glenview has an impressive roster of restaurants, Viviani — who gained popularity on the Bravo network’s food competition “Top Chef” — hopes to make a mark on the local food scene by giving local diners the food they want, but perhaps in a way that they weren’t expecting.
Viviani told Patch he feels like the Glenview community is “somewhat underserved” when it comes to a casual, family-friendly dining experience, that also offers an environment that is appealing to residents looking for a spot to watch sports on television while enjoying their favorite adult beverage.
What sets Chuck Lager apart from the run-of-the-mill sports bar, Viviani says, is the overall food experience diners will find in the concept that also has locations in Orland Park as well as other states. Chuck Lager offers a unique “food-driven concept”.
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Menu items include tuna poke nachos, truffle mushroom nachos, the Mt. Kilimanjaro burger (double patty with beer cheese, bacon and arugula), and other casual and elevated-style entrees.
“I’m not overselling this when I say this is way above your average tavern or sports bar,” Viviani told Patch on Wednesday. “For us, the quality of the food, the quality of the service, the quality of the drinks is paramount.”
He added: “For me, it’s, ‘How do you make a better (chicken) wing?’, ‘How do you make a better burger?’ ‘How do you make better nachos and how do you make your pretzel stand out?’ That’s the personal challenge from the standpoint of being a chef. But then there’s the aspect of familiarity. How do we sell something that people are familiar with in a better way? That’s what excites me.”
In Glenview, Viviani has partnered with franchisees and restaurant veterans David Falado and Marcus Cook, who the chef says have taken much of the stress of opening a new concept up out of the formula. The restaurant, which opened in late March, is located at 2601 Navy Blvd.
Although opening the doors to a new place is nothing new, Viviani says that doing so after the struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic presents even more challenges. He called dealing with the pandemic a big wake-up call from the standpoint of finding ways to survive a global health crisis that forced many restaurants to go under.
“I still get butterflies, always,” Viviani told Patch. “Now, it used to be nightmares and butterflies. Now it’s mostly butterflies. But it’s the restaurant business, right? Something always goes wrong.”
While Viviani pitches Chuck Lager as an elevated experience, he warns that the business isn’t white tablecloth fancy in any form or fashion. The elements of a favorite sports bar that offers the kind of food diners crave when they enter their favorite casual dining establishment. But where he says his concept is different is putting a different twist on pastas, burgers, salads, and yes — even nachos — that make the experience at Chuck Lager more memorable.
Between using quality ingredients on the food size and using mixologists and sommeliers in its bar program, Chuck Lager amps up the typical American tavern experience while providing local diners with a casual dining experience where “you can go with flipflops if you want to”.
The goal, the chef says, is to make food stand out from the thousands of other times diners have eaten at a casual food establishment that causes the dining sports bar experiences to all run together. Rather than using, in some cases, frozen wings or mozzarella sticks and pre-made offerings and run-of-the-mill liquors, Chuck Lager elevates the experience without taking diners out of their culinary comfort zone.
Viviani said, “It’s not like you don’t know what to expect. You know what to expect (from the food). It’s just presented in a much, much better way.”
The latest offerings from Viviani, who moved to the United States from Florence, Italy, in 2005. For someone who has worked since age 11, Viviani — now 44 —says that the experience of making a name for himself not only with the restaurants he has opened while twice appearing on “Top Chef”-branded programming has provided an interesting professional trek.
Viviani’s American dream is alive and well thanks to a worth ethic that has driven the chef and restaurateur to carve out his own path. He said he has gotten everything he has ever wanted, but not without working for everything he has achieved. Never one to take anything for granted, Viviani says that all dreams are often good for is a good night’s sleep, and says nothing has come to him without a lot of work.
Yet, he has seen that hard work pay off — not only in his 50 restaurant offerings, but with a following that “Top Chef” and “Top Chef: All-Stars” has provided in recent years. While that platform was a blessing, appearing on the popular TV show does not guarantee anything.
“Top Chef does not give you business,” he told Patch. “It only exposes the business you are going to build through hard work and dedication.”
He added: “It doesn’t matter how hard I work, it’s how I work and where I work that matters. I’ve made very good (career) choices to team up with very good people in very good times, and I work very hard. People will say, ‘Well, you’ve been lucky – everyone works hard’. But there’s a difference between working hard to be busy and working hard to be productive. I always try to be productive.”
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