LINCOLN SQUARE — Anyone who's driven, walked or biked along Foster Avenue between Damen and Western is likely to have seen Otto Barone's clever marketing ploy: a building emblazoned with a single form of punctuation.
"?"
What does it mean?
Barone is glad you asked — that was the point of the sign.
For 38 years he and his wife, Olga, have owned the building at 2301 W. Foster Ave. where they previously ran a daycare center and most recently leased it to Dorado restaurant.
When Dorado closed, the couple were faced with a dilemma: "Do we sell [the building] or fix it up? We chose to fix it up," he said.
Fix it up as what?
The answer takes the form of another question: the What Came First? Cafe (as in the chicken or the egg).
The cafe, with seating for 50, will serve breakfast/brunch/lunch six days a week. Barone cited River North's Beatrix and the food truck Corner Farmacy as examples of the type of healthy-but-not-boring menu he's crafting.
"Everything has to be a home run," he said. "It will be good eggs and good meats."
For Barone, the son of Sicilian immigrants who grew up in Albany Park, the need to feed people is part of his DNA.
He recalled weekly family dinners, plates heaped high with his nonna's homemade ravioli and his grandpa doling out nips of wine to the youngsters from the gallon jug at his side.
"We had 24 people over for dinner every Saturday," Barone said. "It was just a feast."
But What Came First? is more than an exercise in nostalgia.
Barone said he believes an affordable breakfast/lunch joint is the type of place that will attract reliable repeat business, and that plenty of demand exists for What Came First? on a stretch of Foster that, despite straddling Andersonville and Lincoln Square, feels undeveloped.
He's also hedging his bets.
"When we close at 2 p.m., we have a beautiful kitchen, empty," he said.
Which is why Barone plans to generate additional revenue by renting out What Came First? at night to other cooks for one-time or long-term pop-ups.
That's one reason why the cafe's interior, aside from a handful of decorative touches like his nonna's cookie jar, is decidedly neutral.
The neutral decor can be rearranged for pop-ups. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
The color palette is designed to have both a calming effect and to provide pop-ups with a blank slate. Subtle changes in lighting, music and seating can create a wide range of moods and accommodate a variety of uses, Barone said.
"I designed this to be a chameleon, to be flexible," he said.
Now, for the biggest question mark of all: When will What Came First? open?
For that, Barone doesn't have an answer.
He's obtained the necessary licenses and permits and passed the required inspections. But for all the attention Barone has paid to renovating the building and developing the concept for the cafe, he doesn't necessarily want to be a hands-on restaurateur.
As Barone approaches his seventh decade, he said he and Olga would like to spend more time in her native Guatemala and visiting their two small grandchildren in Texas.
To that end, he's looking for a strong manager to run the cafe or, better yet, an operator/partner to turn the business over to entirely, mimicking the model established by Richard Melman at Lettuce Entertain You, Barone said.
"I love to build the basketball court, I don't want to bounce the ball," he said.
Barone originally teased neighbors with these predecessors of the "?" banner. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
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