Latest news with #GaleStreetInn
Eater
01-07-2025
- Business
- Eater
Chicago Mayor and Restaurant Lobby Once Again Spar Over the Tipping
Gale Street Inn, an institution on the Northwest Side that closed in late June after 62 years, isn't being remembered for its ribs. Over the last two weeks, critics of Mayor Brandon Johnson have latched onto the closing of the Jefferson Park restaurant as proof that getting rid of the tipped minimum wage is bad news for the restaurant industry. The Tribune 's coverage of the May closure included comments from Illinois Restaurant Association CEO Sam Toia, who shared concerns about how escalating costs could lead to more closures. That led to the weekend when the Tribune 's editorial board followed with a provocative headline above a photo of the Gale Street: 'Why Chicago Has a Restaurant Crisis.' The editorial warned of a future firestorm of restaurant closures. A May piece in the Sun-Times also spun a tale of impending doom. The restaurant association launched this campaign before Memorial Day, as 44th Ward Ald. Bennett Lawson introduced a proposal to repeal the ban. All of this happened as One Fair Wage battles Springfield to ban the tipped minimum wage across the state. One Fair Wage co-founder Saru Jayaraman, whose organization has kept busy pushing similar legislation across the country, is unfazed. She tells Eater that it's just part of a standard playbook. With federal policies taking aim at the most vulnerable when it comes to cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, Jayaraman is more focused than ever on rooting out what she views as a practice that fosters inequity in the restaurant industry. OFW has launched Solidarity Restaurants, an initiative to protect immigrant workers from ICE raids, and the group is currently working on banning the tipped minimum wage in New York. 'The [National] Restaurant Association knows that if they let it happen in New York, a lot of other states on the East Coast will follow — in the Northeast, in particular,' Jayaraman says. In Chicago, after heated deliberations between Johnson's camp and the restaurant lobby, the City Council agreed in 2023 to gradually rid the city of the subsidy used by restaurants over five years; in practice, this means the tipped minimum wage will increase annually by 8 percent every July through 2028. This year, the jump brings the rate for employers with four or more workers to $12.62 per hour. The standard minimum wage has also jumped to $16.60 per hour. However, critics continue to debate whether tipped workers will earn more money, arguing inflation and spiking costs are forcing customers to tip less. That's where solutions like service fees enter the fray. Talking about service fees is a good way to start an argument online. There's an uneasiness for restaurant owners, particularly independent operators who face everyday operational challenges without the benefit of deep-pocketed investors. Even Thattu, heralded for embracing a no-tip and no service fee model, has brought back tipping as means to retain workers. The plight of the indepedenent restaurant is front of mind nationwide. New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has pledged to create a department dedicated in supporting 'mom and pop' businesses if he's elected to office. Waiting for licensing or responses for the right city department can crush a business. As lobbyists and lawmakers battle, restaurant workers and owners remain in limbo, confused on a variety of topics, including whether it's legal to pool tips, sharing them with the front and back of the house. That's a point that One Fair Wage's Neela Caicedo-Rosario clarifies, saying sharing is permitted. Chicagoans have been bombarded with data points as the restaurant association and One Fair Wage justify their stances. Both kept a close eye on Washington, D.C., where in 2022 voters approved a gradual elimination of the tipped minimum wage, but have since hit pause. A Washington Post editorial called the city's move to rid the tipped minimum wage a 'disaster,' much in the same way the Trib read the tea leaves in Chicago. Johnson made the tipped minimum wage a key part of his election platform, to cede power back to workers. And while his camp says that 10,000 jobs have been created since the ordinance went into effect in July 2024, the restaurant lobby claims that 5,200 jobs were lost between July 2024 and December 2024. There are also conflicting figures about the number of restaurant closings and openings, as well how much the city has lost in terms of sales tax revenue. Last week at an appearance on the West Side in collaboration with One Fair Wage, Johnson heralded the Chicago ordinance. 'There is no place for an antiquated system such as this, particularly in a great global city,' Johnson said at the press conference. 'And so the One Fair Wage became a matter of justice, economic justice.' One of Johnson's progressive allies, 26th Ward Ald. Jesse Fuentes, played a key role in brokering a compromise between Johnson's camp and the Illinois Restaurant Association in convincing key stakeholders to lend their voices to the discussion as the sides went back and forth two years ago. 'Some individuals are going to do the minimum wage and keep tips, some individuals are going to do the minimum wage and have a service charge, so the service charge goes to the front of the house and the back of the house,' Fuentes tells Eater. 'It really depends on the model.' With July's arrival, the city enters the ordinance's second year of five years of annual wage increases. Arguing about the future of Chicago's restaurant industry is looking to be a regular summer occurrence as America enters a bizarre political time full of economic uncertainty. 'We are a diverse city with many different forms of business models,' Fuentes adds. 'No restaurant is the same — it's not a monolithic industry, right? And so that means there's going to be different challenges depending on the business model, and we have to target one sort of restaurant at a time.' See More:
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Why Chicago has a restaurant crisis
The hit TV show 'The Bear' chronicles an independent restaurant's existential struggles and celebrates Chicagoans' determination to survive. But you need only traverse one of the city's real-life arteries, such as North Broadway through Edgewater or along 26th Street in Little Village, to see the the state of one of Chicago's most celebrated and artful industries: shuttered restaurants pockmark almost every block. Chicago's storied restaurant business is mired in crisis. If you doubt our word that this is a dire emergency, we suggest you swivel your head from road or sidewalk and look for yourselves. Fine dining. Trattorias. Taquerias. Vietnamese cuisine. Italian beef. It seems not to matter. Chicago has never been a locus of chain restaurants, unlike many cities in the south. The fame of the city's restaurants has sprouted from the creativity of independent operators, some craving (and winning) James Beard Awards and international acclaim, and others merely wanting to serve and nourish their communities. We hardly need to tell you that many locally owned restaurants are the foci of their neighborhoods, which accounts for why there was such a howl of anguish in recent days when the cozy Gale Street Inn on Milwaukee Avenue in Jefferson Park announced its closure. Its famously genial operator, George Karzas, had owned and run the restaurant since 1994. Among his many other good works, he supported his local Jefferson Park theater, The Gift, storefront theaters and storefront restaurants sharing much of the same homegrown DNA in this city. At the Gale Street Inn, you always knew you were in Chicago. The problem? The current headwinds are many in the restaurant business, including the well-documented rise in food costs. But top of mind of those in the hospitality industry in Chicago is the high cost of labor and the city's shortsighted decision to get rid of the so-called tipped minimum wage following a campaign by an out-of-state activist group, One Fair Wage, which had worked its agenda on Mayor Brandon Johnson and enough of the aldermen in the City Council. Karzas' decision to close the Gale Street Inn comes as the tipped minimum wage was set to increase again Tuesday, rising from $11.02 to $12.62 an hour as part of a phased-in approach that has been a progressive nightmare for restaurants. One Fair Wage is led by Saru Jayaraman, a Yale University-educated lawyer, activist and academic who runs the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Back in Chicago, Christina Gonzalez from Taqueria Los Comales told us this past week that she worries not about political campaigns, but the price of her burritos at a family business with a 50-year history. 'I can't charge $24 for a burrito,' she told us. 'My customers won't come.' Gonzalez thus defined the Catch-22. While fine-dining establishments that attract the wealthiest customers can raise (and have raised) their menu prices to eye-popping levels, restaurants that appeal to ordinary Chicagoans know that they have already hit the ceiling of what their customers can afford to pay. Their only option often is to close. 'You raise prices, you lose customers,' Sam Toia, head of the Illinois Restaurant Association told us. And that is exactly what has been happening, Gonzalez said. Counter service is looking to her like the only way to go, which means laying off servers and defeating what the rise in the tipped minimum wage sought to achieve. Anyone who attended the National Restaurant Show in Chicago last month was smacked in the face at booth after booth by a single agenda wrought from desperation: how to harness technology to find ways to use fewer human workers. But while fast-food joints can and will have a robot flipping burgers, independent, table-service restaurants are all about human interaction. We think there is a preponderance of evidence that the end of the tipped minimum wage, which Johnson has consistently defended using racially charged language, is a major cause of the current crisis. Even some servers agree, because their hours are being cut and they're being cross-trained to juggle multiple roles as owners try to cut costs. They can see that their workplaces are on the cusp of going out of business. 'None of us want this,' said Jose Garcia, a veteran server at The Dearborn in Chicago's Loop. In Massachusetts, hardly a conservative state, a ballot initiative that would have eliminated the tipped minimum wage was defeated by voters last fall by a margin of roughly 2-to-1 after the state's Democratic governor, Maura Healey, came out against the proposal, saying she was convinced it would lead to the closing of restaurants. The arguments for the drastic rise in labor costs hardly make sense because it forms only a relatively small portion of servers' actual income. Hard as it may be for some in City Council to understand, the health of their restaurants matters more to most servers than the size of their base paycheck, because the bulk of their income comes from tips. Most servers of our acquaintance have no interest in being paid a flat hourly wage that discourages tipping; they know that will hurt their earnings. What they most want is to be working in a dynamic restaurant where they can offer excellent service so that the tips flow. It long has been state law that in the event tipped employees such as servers and bartenders do not at least make the prevailing minimum wage, their employers must make up the difference. Few need to do so but still, most do. And, even in the case of the few bad actors, fairness demands that the law be more strictly enforced, rather than forcing all restaurants to increase their wage bills. Toia told us his group would support the prosecution of those who do not do right by their workers. It's axiomatic in the restaurant business that servers make better money than those in the so-called back of the house. Korina Sanchez, vice president and general counsel at Third Coast Hospitality, told us that information from point-of-sale systems tells her that her servers typically make $40 an hour (good, this is hard work). Elsewhere, Toia said, it can be far more. Restaurants generally now know what their servers are making because cash tips have become rare. The change in the law is causing yet harsher inequity with non-tipped employees. Before these changes, servers already were making significantly more than line cooks and dishwashers, who are more likely to be immigrants shouldering the support of a family. If Congress passes Donald Trump's tax-and-spending bill, which contains new tax breaks for tipped workers, that will tip the balance (no pun intended) even further in servers' favor. Sanchez said that one of the saddest aspects of the crisis is that it is preventing her from doing more for her kitchen workers. So what to do? Simply put, City Council should stop this craziness before we lose any more restaurants. Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D.C., proposed last month to repeal Initiative 82 — the three-year-old law that eliminates D.C.'s tipped minimum wage. She knows it did not work. 'We think our restaurants are facing a perfect storm with increased operational and supply costs, higher rent, and unique labor challenges,' she said, arguing that it was part of her job to 'ensure our restaurants can compete, survive, grow and employ D.C. residents,' Axios reported. Amen. Meanwhile in Chicago, Mayor Johnson has made no such statements, insisting that the city will push ahead with its increases. His mouthpieces on City Council have been arguing that the sector is doing just great. This is nonsense. Only restaurants funded by chains and private equity groups are growing in Chicago. For independents, it's an existential crisis. At a bare minimum, City Council should stop the increase in the tipped minimum wage and leave it at its current rate, $11.02 an hour. Most likely, it would need to take this action with a two-thirds majority, so as to prevent a veto, given that the pleas from Chicago restaurants so far have fallen on unreceptive mayoral ears. There is an ordinance waiting in committee, as proposed by Ald. Bennett Lawson, 44th, that would repeal this entire misguided mishegoss. Ideally, City Council would listen to fellow Democratic leaders in Washington and Boston and admit this did not work. When pressed by us, Toia said that the Illinois Restaurant Association, which he described as 'progressive and pragmatic,' could live with a pause rather than a repeal. It is the least City Council should do to save Chicago's restaurants. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@
Chicago Tribune
29-06-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Why Chicago has a restaurant crisis
The hit TV show 'The Bear' chronicles an independent restaurant's existential struggles and celebrates Chicagoans' determination to survive. But you need only traverse one of the city's real-life arteries, such as North Broadway through Edgewater or along 26th Street in Little Village, to see the the state of one of Chicago's most celebrated and artful industries: shuttered restaurants pockmark almost every block. Chicago's storied restaurant business is mired in crisis. If you doubt our word that this is a dire emergency, we suggest you swivel your head from road or sidewalk and look for yourselves. Fine dining. Trattorias. Taquerias. Vietnamese cuisine. Italian beef. It seems not to matter. Chicago has never been a locus of chain restaurants, unlike many cities in the south. The fame of the city's restaurants has sprouted from the creativity of independent operators, some craving (and winning) James Beard Awards and international acclaim, and others merely wanting to serve and nourish their communities. We hardly need to tell you that many locally owned restaurants are the foci of their neighborhoods, which accounts for why there was such a howl of anguish in recent days when the cozy Gale Street Inn on Milwaukee Avenue in Jefferson Park announced its closure. Its famously genial operator, George Karzas, had owned and run the restaurant since 1994. Among his many other good works, he supported his local Jefferson Park theater, The Gift, storefront theaters and storefront restaurants sharing much of the same homegrown DNA in this city. At the Gale Street Inn, you always knew you were in Chicago. The problem? The current headwinds are many in the restaurant business, including the well-documented rise in food costs. But top of mind of those in the hospitality industry in Chicago is the high cost of labor and the city's shortsighted decision to get rid of the so-called tipped minimum wage following a campaign by an out-of-state activist group, One Fair Wage, which had worked its agenda on Mayor Brandon Johnson and enough of the aldermen in the City Council. Karzas' decision to close the Gale Street Inn comes as the tipped minimum wage was set to increase again Tuesday, rising from $11.02 to $12.62 an hour as part of a phased-in approach that has been a progressive nightmare for restaurants. One Fair Wage is led by Saru Jayaraman, a Yale University-educated lawyer, activist and academic who runs the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. Back in Chicago, Christina Gonzalez from Taqueria Los Comales told us this past week that she worries not about political campaigns, but the price of her burritos at a family business with a 50-year history. 'I can't charge $24 for a burrito,' she told us. 'My customers won't come.' Gonzalez thus defined the Catch-22. While fine-dining establishments that attract the wealthiest customers can raise (and have raised) their menu prices to eye-popping levels, restaurants that appeal to ordinary Chicagoans know that they have already hit the ceiling of what their customers can afford to pay. Their only option often is to close. 'You raise prices, you lose customers,' Sam Toia, head of the Illinois Restaurant Association told us. And that is exactly what has been happening, Gonzalez said. Counter service is looking to her like the only way to go, which means laying off servers and defeating what the rise in the tipped minimum wage sought to achieve. Anyone who attended the National Restaurant Show in Chicago last month was smacked in the face at booth after booth by a single agenda wrought from desperation: how to harness technology to find ways to use fewer human workers. But while fast-food joints can and will have a robot flipping burgers, independent, table-service restaurants are all about human interaction. We think there is a preponderance of evidence that the end of the tipped minimum wage, which Johnson has consistently defended using racially charged language, is a major cause of the current crisis. Even some servers agree, because their hours are being cut and they're being cross-trained to juggle multiple roles as owners try to cut costs. They can see that their workplaces are on the cusp of going out of business. 'None of us want this,' said Jose Garcia, a veteran server at The Dearborn in Chicago's Loop. In Massachusetts, hardly a conservative state, a ballot initiative that would have eliminated the tipped minimum wage was defeated by voters last fall by a margin of roughly 2-to-1 after the state's Democratic governor, Maura Healey, came out against the proposal, saying she was convinced it would lead to the closing of restaurants. The arguments for the drastic rise in labor costs hardly make sense because it forms only a relatively small portion of servers' actual income. Hard as it may be for some in City Council to understand, the health of their restaurants matters more to most servers than the size of their base paycheck, because the bulk of their income comes from tips. Most servers of our acquaintance have no interest in being paid a flat hourly wage that discourages tipping; they know that will hurt their earnings. What they most want is to be working in a dynamic restaurant where they can offer excellent service so that the tips flow. It long has been state law that in the event tipped employees such as servers and bartenders do not at least make the prevailing minimum wage, their employers must make up the difference. Few need to do so but still, most do. And, even in the case of the few bad actors, fairness demands that the law be more strictly enforced, rather than forcing all restaurants to increase their wage bills. Toia told us his group would support the prosecution of those who do not do right by their workers. It's axiomatic in the restaurant business that servers make better money than those in the so-called back of the house. Korina Sanchez, vice president and general counsel at Third Coast Hospitality, told us that information from point-of-sale systems tells her that her servers typically make $40 an hour (good, this is hard work). Elsewhere, Toia said, it can be far more. Restaurants generally now know what their servers are making because cash tips have become rare. The change in the law is causing yet harsher inequity with non-tipped employees. Before these changes, servers were making significantly more than line cooks and dishwashers, who are more likely to be immigrants shouldering the support of a family. If Congress passes Donald Trump's tax-and-spending bill, which contains new tax breaks for tipped workers, that will tip the balance (no pun intended) even further in servers' favor. Sanchez said that one of the saddest aspects of the crisis is that it is preventing her from doing more for her kitchen workers. So what to do? Simply put, City Council should stop this craziness before we lose any more restaurants. Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D.C., proposed last month to repeal Initiative 82 — the three-year-old law that eliminates D.C.'s tipped minimum wage. She knows it did not work. 'We think our restaurants are facing a perfect storm with increased operational and supply costs, higher rent, and unique labor challenges,' she said, arguing that it was part of her job to 'ensure our restaurants can compete, survive, grow and employ D.C. residents,' Axios reported. Amen. Meanwhile in Chicago, Mayor Johnson has made no such statements, insisting that the city will push ahead with its increases. His mouthpieces on City Council have been arguing that the sector is doing just great. This is nonsense. Only restaurants funded by chains and private equity groups are growing in Chicago. For independents, it's an existential crisis. At a bare minimum, City Council should stop the increase in the tipped minimum wage and leave it at its current rate, $11.02 an hour. Most likely, it would need to take this action with a two-thirds majority, so as to prevent a veto, given that the pleas from Chicago restaurants so far have fallen on unreceptive mayoral ears. There is an ordinance waiting in committee, as proposed by Ald. Bennett Lawson, 44th, that would repeal this entire misguided mishegoss. Ideally, City Council would listen to fellow Democratic leaders in Washington and Boston and admit this did not work. When pressed by us, Toia said that the Illinois Restaurant Association, which he described as 'progressive and pragmatic,' could live with a pause rather than a repeal. It is the least City Council should do to save Chicago's restaurants.
Chicago Tribune
20-06-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Gale Street Inn, known for ‘the best ribs in the city of Chicago,' abruptly closes
George Karzas kept his cards close to his chest. At Weston's Coffee, where he often orders a blueberry muffin and drip coffee with room for cream, the baristas had no idea the longtime restaurant owner planned to close Gale Street Inn. Nor did his many customers in and around Jefferson Park. 'It's too soon to talk,' Karzas said Friday from the bright red doorway of his restaurant at 4914 N. Milwaukee Ave. He has kept the door locked since Wednesday night. Karzas announced on Instagram Thursday that Gale Street Inn, a neighborhood staple in operation since 1963, was permanently closed, a troubling trend among local restaurants, industry professionals say. He cited staffing shortages as the primary reason for the abrupt closure. 'Hiring and retaining quality staff has proven too tough for too long,' he wrote. 'We are tired of sucking, we have standards you know. But overworking our existing crew is not the answer. There are simply too many of you and not enough of us.' He went on to say in the post that he's loved operating in Chicago, 'the greatest food town on the planet,' and that there is 'no gracious way to close a retail business.' The restaurant is widely known for its signature baby back ribs. Some locals are mourning the loss of the restaurant. Konrad Klima, who was born and raised in Jefferson Park, had been having a tough day and was planning to have a beer and a bowl of soup at Gale Street on Friday evening. He was disappointed when he heard Friday afternoon that he'd have to find somewhere else to go. 'That's a bummer,' he said. George Catania had been eating at Gale Street for 50 years, since he was a little kid and would eat dinner there with his grandparents. He liked the ribs and the people who worked there. Catania said he feels bad that they are all suddenly out of a job. Gale Street Inn opened in 1963 in a small tavern near the corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Gale Street, serving Texas-size beef and ham sandwiches across the street from its current location, Georgene Chioles-Neff, the daughter of the original owners, George and Joan Chioles, told the Tribune when reached by phone Friday. She said her dad borrowed $5,000 from his parents to open the tavern, and they were able to clean it up to make it 'very quaint and sweet' with a 'beautiful back bar.' Her mom, a Chicago Public Schools teacher, came up with the name Gale Street Inn, said Chioles-Neff, 71, of Kingston in DeKalb County. She remembers her father slicing the beef behind the bar at that time, and serving the sandwiches on dark rye. A couple of years later, Gale Street cook Louie Artis shared with her family his recipe for baby back ribs, which became so popular that lines formed outside the 20-table tavern, said Chioles-Neff, who started washing dishes at the tavern at age 10. 'It was a family affair,' she said. 'We were from Jefferson Park. We were from the neighborhood. Because it was a young family working together that was part of the appeal.' In 1968, the city took the tavern property via eminent domain to build the Jefferson Park Transit Center, forcing the restaurant to relocate, she said. Because of concerns about traffic due to the ribs' success, a local bank attempted to block the family from purchasing the new property, which she said at the time was a chicken farm. Chioles-Neff said the family used the name of Bob Beck, a bartender at the restaurant, to buy it. 'It's a true story, so help me God,' Chioles-Neff said with a laugh, adding that there was a line out the door when they reopened in 1969. George Chioles sold the Gale Street Inn in 1985 to Harry Karzas, father of George Karzas, after opening a second location in Mundelein, which the family no longer owns, she said. George Karzas, who had worked for Lettuce Entertain You founder Rich Melman, took it over in 1992 and worked to reposition the restaurant as a more upscale place. The restaurant was still widely lauded for its ribs, slathered in a sweet peppery sauce. Other items, such as crab bathed in lemon sauce, enjoyed their moment in the sun as well. The restaurant was also known to serve beer from local breweries and hang local art on the walls. Chioles-Neff said she was shocked and heartbroken to learn the restaurant closed this week. All the memories came flooding back — working with her grandfather in the early morning hours, her father's 'bigger than life' personality and her mom's generosity. 'The three of us that are left, my brother, my sister and myself, are very sad,' she said. 'I cried all day yesterday. It was another loss. My mom and dad put their entire heart and soul into (the restaurant). Just two weeks ago, Sam Toia, the president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association, spoke with Karzas. During that conversation, he got an inkling Karzas might close the eatery soon, but Toia said it seemed Karzas just decided to go for it this week. Toia called Karzas the 'de facto mayor of Milwaukee Avenue,' saying he knows everything about Jefferson Park. 'Gale Street Inn was a place you went for your communions, your graduations, your anniversaries,' Toia said. 'Now you're taking another great place away from the Northwest Side of Chicago, where people went to celebrate special occasions.' 'You could get as good a steak at Gale Street as you can at any of our steakhouses downtown,' he continued. 'And the ribs might have been the best ribs in the city of Chicago.' Toia said Karzas, and many other restaurateurs Toia represents, had large concerns about the financial viability of their businesses after the elimination of the tip credit. He also said that since 2020, labor and product costs have both increased 35%, among other expenses. Fear of immigration raids is another big concern right now, he said. All in all, small, locally owned businesses are struggling to keep their doors open, Toia said. 'The restaurant industry was an industry of nickels and dimes before the pandemic, and post-pandemic, it's turned into a business of pennies and nickels,' Toia said. Other local business owners also feel the change coming to the neighborhood. Steve Bollos' family took over the Jefferson Inn — a beloved dive bar right next door to Gale Street — around the same time the restaurant opened its doors. Bollos and Karzas worked side by side for close to 30 years and shared many of the same longtime regulars. 'Gale Street and George have been an anchor for Jefferson Park when it comes to food culture,' Bollos said. 'The closing of Gale Street is pretty devastating for the Jefferson Park neighborhood and Chicago in general, because they created this label of a place to go, where you can be treated right and feel at home.'
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Legendary Chicago Restaurant Has 'Abruptly' Closed for Good
After more than six decades in operation, one of Chicago's iconic restaurants has closed up shop. Gale Street Inn, which opened in 1963 in the Windy City's Jefferson Park neighborhood, announced Thursday morning it was shuttering. The restaurant had previously hinted as much in an Instagram post Wednesday night, sharing a video along with the message "It's been a heck of a run Chicago, thank you!" This morning, the official Gale Street Inn account confirmed they are indeed shutting down, blaming staffing issues for the decision. "With a sad but satisfied heart, we have closed our restaurant," the post reads. Hiring and retaining quality staff has proven too tough for too long. We are tired of sucking, we have standards you know. But overworking our existing crew is not the answer. There are simply too many of you and not enough of us. Thank you to our current & past teams." Not surprisingly, Gale Street's announcement was met with a slew of comments from disappointed fans. The restaurant also honored its longtime customers in its farewell post. "Man what a run! Thank you to all of our guests for all of the years," they wrote. "To our vendors, thank you for delivering the goods, always. To the city of Chicago, we loved operating in the greatest food town on the planet." As for anyone still holding a Gale Street Inn gift card, the restaurant says it will devise a plan for reimbursement and announce it at a later date. Owner George Karzas told the Chicago Sun-Times that business at the restaurant, which was known for its steaks and baby back ribs, remained robust even up to its closure. In the end, it was the staffing problems that proved too much to overcome and led to the shutdown. "I'm tired, it's hard," Karzas told the Sun-Times. Legendary Chicago Restaurant Has 'Abruptly' Closed for Good first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 19, 2025
