Chef Rodelio Aglibot, best known to Chicago diners from his work at the River North hotspot Sunda, opened Earth + Ocean in Mount Prospect last year, after a short tenure with BLT Restaurant Group and a fizzle with Argent, a short-lived occupant of the Dana Hotel. Earth + Ocean, one of Chicago’s Best New Restaurants in May 2013, has clicked along so well that Aglibot and his partners now plan a late-winter opening for Yum Cha (333 E. Randolph St., no phone yet), a dim sum and Cantonese spot in the space that housed Maison Brasserie.
“We are going to pay our respect to some classic Cantonese dishes,” Aglibot says, citing sweet and sour pork, shrimp with lobster sauce, and Peking duck (which diners won’t have to order ahead). Dim sum items will cost about $3 to $7, and wok-style entrées will run $9 to $12 at lunch and $12 to the mid-$20s at dinner. Aglibot says Yum Cha likely will offer dim sum packages for takeout to nearby Millennium Park.
The name Yum Cha literally means to drink tea, Aglibot says, but idiomatically, it means “Let’s go eat dim sum.” The first thing that occurred to us was a happy food dance—but maybe that amounts to the same thing.