As one of the many people who now work remotely, I am always looking for a good spot to tap away at my laptop, a place where I can escape my house now and then for a change of scenery. My current pick? Daisies.

Yes, that’s right: The Logan Square Midwest-Italian restaurant has become the best coworking space in town. Consider that, in addition to its pasta-focused dinner, it’s open daily from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. for pastries and coffee, has free Wi-Fi and plenty of electrical plugs, serves draft oat milk lattes, and sets out bottles of water on the bar. But the biggest draw: the exceptional offerings from Leigh Omilinsky, who joined Daisies in December as an executive pastry chef and partner. Her daytime menu includes ham and cheese croissants and kouign-amanns, as well as specials like a strawberry Danish with pepitas or a pretzel croissant with beer cheese and bacon.

This change is one of the many that have come to Daisies, which executive chef and proprietor Joe Frillman opened in 2017. In March, he closed the original space and moved a couple of blocks down, to 2375 North Milwaukee Avenue, taking Daisies from 66 to 110 seats. The new space is unrecognizable as the former home to the Radler: Gone are the beer hall tables and dark beams; in are cushy seats and tiled floors. Frillman kept the old restaurant at 2523 North Milwaukee, which he’s going to transform into a shop offering lunch and a small dinner menu. All of this, including going from 32 employees to 76, is possible only because what Daisies has been doing for the past six years has worked so well. The staff had low turnover, and patrons consistently came in for dinner and sandwiches at lunchtime and visited Daisies’ stalls at farmers’ markets.

Frillman and Omilinsky, who worked together 17 years ago at Tramonto’s Steak & Seafood in Wheeling, share a vision for this iteration. “This is the restaurant we wanted when we were in our 20s,” Omilinsky says. “But it didn’t exist.” The partnership gives Daisies its first dedicated pastry chef (“Our program had been whatever I was capable of making as a savory individual,” Frillman says), and Omilinsky approaches her sweets with Frillman’s local-first ethos. “The Midwest has lots of nostalgia,” she says. “There are Jell-O-based things and I thought, How do we make it good but still familiar?” Her strawberry panna cotta capped with gelée answers that: Omilinsky uses local strawberries and pepitas for nutty crunch. She also offers a gooey butter cake and raspberry pretzel salad.

Though much has changed, Frillman and head of culinary Thomas Leonard remain focused on the kind of thoughtful cuisine that’s been Daisies’ hallmark. “We have to keep some semblance of what made us successful,” Frillman says, so dishes like the onion dip (which you can now get with a dollop of caviar), potted carrots, and pappardelle with mushroom ragu remain. But the menu has expanded. “The old kitchen was a closet,” Frillman says. “Now we have a bigger footprint and new equipment, and it allows us to do an entrée section with sustainable proteins.” The bigger footprint allows Frillman and Omilinsky to do more than serve fried whitefish. It lets them turn Daisies into Logan Square’s living room.