photo: alex garcia/chicago tribune

Restaurateur Brendan Sodikoff turns his sights from delicatessens to barbecue and ramen. 

Every few weeks, Brendan Sodikoff (Gilt Bar, Maude’s Liquor Bar, et al.) emerges from whatever mad-science laboratory allows him to concoct food and restaurants that make people congregate and slaver to release a mulligatawny of news, ideas, plans, and dreams.

This week, he announced that his bar and Texas-style barbecue pit, Green Street Smoked Meats (112 N. Green St., no phone yet) is about a month away from opening. “It’s all built,” he says, adding that his focus will move to the barbecue joint now that the wrinkles are smoothed out at his not-a-deli, Dillman’s (354 W. Hubbard St., 312-988-0078).

A few weeks after that, Sodikoff will open a ramen bar next door. The spot will be named High Five Ramen, after one of his favorite bars in Tokyo. He says the two restaurants share an exit but have separate entrances, which we suppose we’ll understand when we see it. “[The ramen bar] seats 16 people at most,” he says. “It feels so traditional, that crammed-tight, really, really tiny space. The menu is incredibly small, if you can call it a menu—two items.”

Still in the works for Sodikoff are restoring the glamour of Maxim’s, whatever he has planned for the former Cafe Con Leche space in Bucktown, other projects in London and Hollywood, and wasn’t there a pizzeria in the works at some point? All we can say for sure is that when they open, you’ll see one of the core principles of mad science in effect: For every Sodikoff action, there is an immense excited-foodie reaction.