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Lollapalooza Vendor Rock 'n' Roll Noodles Opening Mad Love In Ravenswood

By Patty Wetli | March 29, 2016 6:17am

RAVENSWOOD — Shut out of Lollapalooza tickets?

At least you can eat like you're at the fest, anytime you want, for way less than 300 bucks.

Anna Abbey, who's served up Thai food at Lolla for six years under the name Rock 'n' Roll Noodles, is bringing beef cheek and pad see eiu to Ravenswood with her coming-soon brick-and-mortar Mad Love restaurant.

A bit of Lollapalooza is coming to Ravenswood. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

The brown butcher paper that's been covering the windows at 1810 W. Montrose Ave. for the past year has been hiding Abbey's renovations to the storefront, which are nearly complete.

"It was so scary in here — I don't know that it had been updated in 20 years," said Abbey. "We changed everything."

Anna Abbey, owner of Mad Love, in front of the restaurant's "collage wall" covered in "everything I love." [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]

Pending final approval from the city, Mad Love should open within the next couple of weeks, and when it does, Abbey will have come full circle.

Though she now lives in Logan Square with her husband and two daughters, Abbey grew up in Budlong Woods. Her parents, Thai immigrants, briefly owned one of Chicago's first Thai restaurants, and then a Thai grocery at the Western Avenue address now occupied by Opart Thai House.

"My mom's a phenomenal cook, she's a queen," said Abbey, who's in possession of a six-inch-thick stack of hand-written family recipes.

"She was always an experimenter. She would try spaghetti and meatloaf and she would completely Thai-ify it — the spaghetti would be wicked spicy," Abbey said.

"I think a large part of what I do now it try to recreate the foods I love," she said. "I serve food that I like to eat."

Cooking may be in Abbey's blood, but restaurateur wasn't her first career choice.

A former music agent in L.A., Abbey represented some "pretty big" acts — "I don't want to name names," she said — before moving back to Chicago with her daughters, now ages 12 and 17.

"I was working 9-to-5 and I looked at my little girls and thought, 'What is the story I want them to know about me?' I quite my job the next day and started a food business," Abbey recalled.

Having grown up in a "farm-to-table" household before farm-to-table was even a thing, Abbey built Rock 'n' Roll Noodles around the idea of taking the freshest local and seasonal ingredients and infusing them with traditional Thai flavors.

"My goal was to basically go back to my roots," she said.

Variations on sticky rice. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

She signed up for farmers markets in Daley Plaza, Federal Plaza and Division Street — following in the footsteps of her mom and grandmother, who had run a farmers market stand in Thailand — and also brought Rock 'n' Roll to the city's festivals, including Lollapalooza.

"My 17-year-old was running a farmers market table when she was 9. It's not only selling, it's the community," Abbey said.

The markets gave Abbey a platform to grow her customer base and to introduce new dishes.

"You get instant feedback," she said. "I think I was lucky people were willing to give us a try."

Farmers markets allowed Abbey to grow her customer base. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

As business boomed, Abbey outgrew in succession her home kitchen, a shared kitchen and finally a friend's restaurant kitchen in Evanston.

Mad Love is a response not only to the need for a cooking surface to call her own, but also Abbey's way of satisfying customers who would "freak out" at the end of market season.

The Ravenswood storefront brings Abbey back to her old stomping grounds.

"We used to go to Margie's all the time," she said of the ice cream shop's Montrose outpost.

The location is also relatively close to the Old Town School of Folk Music, where Abbey's husband, John, is a teacher.

The couple are financing Mad Love out of their own pockets — hence the year-long renovations — and a recent Kickstarter aimed at getting the restaurant across the finish line was "Old Town city," Abbey said. "It was funded by all these artists."

Abbey is a former music agent and her husband, John, is a professional musician and teacher at Old Town School. Artists have been strong early supporters of Mad Love — Sue Demel, singer with the folk trio Sons of the Never Wrong, painted the whimsical murals on the restaurant's walls. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]

Once Mad Love opens, likely daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Abbey said her hope is that she draws a broad cross-section of neighbors, as a throwback to the days she was living in New York City with her sister.

"We would have these food parties — it was one of my best memories, how food and music brings people of all walks of life together," Abbey said.

"There would be artists, bankers, students. I've been trying to recreate that sense of community. It's just the greatest feeling," she said.

Pad Thai chicken taco. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

Fresh spring rolls. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

Mad Love will feature Rock 'n' Roll Noodle's greatest hits, along with daily specials. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

A friend of Anna Abbey's traveled all the way from New York to personally deliver this light fixture. [Facebook/Rock 'n' Roll Noodle Company]

What's behind the butcher paper? Mad Love. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]

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