WEST LOOP — The Little Goat, the second restaurant from acclaimed chef Stephanie Izard, opens at 7 a.m. Friday — capping off a month of long-awaited, much-hyped restaurant openings.
Izard's tribute to the classic diner at 820 W. Randolph St., across the street from her popular Girl and the Goat, will offer more than 90 menu items available all day, until 2 a.m. One example: the $11 "Fat Elvis Waffle," with bananas, peanut-butter butter and bacon maple syrup. The menu was still being tweaked Thursday afternoon, a spokeswoman said.
Izard had already given diners a taste of what to expect with the opening earlier this month of Little Goat Bread, her adjacent bakery and cafe serving a carb-heavy roster of breads and pastries as well as salads, soups and Stumptown Coffee. A retail area within the bakery carries her cookbook, maple syrup made in collaboration with Burton's Maplewood Farm and merchandise emblazoned with Izard's now-signature goat emblem.
She's still not done. Starting Friday, Little Goat Bread will morph into a bar after 6 p.m., offering boozy milkshakes and a dozen craft beers on tap until 2 a.m. And an upstairs dining area, which currently serves as additional seating for the bakery, will be where Izard and guest chefs will hold occasional cooking classes.
The second week of December, when Little Goat Bread opened, turned out to be a lucky week for a few other big-name projects.
That's when master sommelier and "Check, Please!" host Alpana Singh unveiled her first restaurant, the wine-focused Boarding House at 720 N. Wells St., in similarly staggered fashion. The first-floor bar and basement lounge opened that week; the third-floor dining room started seating customers last week.
Grace, chef Curtis Duffy's dream restaurant, a hop and skip east of the Little Goat at 652 W. Randolph St., also opened during the second week of December.
The 64-seat restaurant from Duffy, a winner of two Michelin stars, is about as far from a diner as you can get. It serves two $185 tasting menus nightly, and cocktail attire is recommended.
