When I moved to Chicago in 2004, Avec was already legendary; a tiny, always-packed restaurant that was virtually impossible to get into and was on every food nerd’s bucket list. Twenty years later, the original location in the West Loop is still tiny, still cramped, and still going strong, and another much larger location in River North is attracting a whole new set of fans. I spent some time with the man running both restaurants (as well as Bar Avec) to learn some of the secrets of the success of this iconic spot.
Even the most chef-obsessed folks in Chicago might not know chef de cuisine Dylan Patel’s name, despite his role running one of the city’s most popular restaurants. Patel actually began his career at Avec in 2015 as an intern and never left, with the exception of a few stages at other restaurants. He worked his way up, eventually opening the River North location of Avec with then-chef Perry Hendrix in 2021.
Patel climbed the ranks by putting his head down and cooking; you don’t see him doing a ton of social media, competitions, or TV appearances. Originally, he worked in the tiny basement at Avec West Loop (“we call it the underbelly”) on the day shift. He got the attention of Hendrix and One Off Hospitality chief Paul Kahan with his food — not for the customers, but for the staff. “The best way to show a chef that you’re ready to put something on a menu is through your staff meals,” explains Patel. “Paul and Perry would eat what I made, and they would say I needed to put things on the menu. Trust began to grow, and after a while, Paul told me that he didn’t need to taste my dishes anymore before they went on the menu.”
It’s not easy taking over a restaurant that’s had a series of iconic chefs and has a legion of fans. Certain dishes, as you might imagine, are untouchable. The bacon-wrapped, chorizo-stuffed dates, the focaccia, and the brandade will always be on the menu, to the occasional chagrin (mostly joking) of Patel. “I can’t eat those dates anymore,” he says. “I think anyone who has worked in a restaurant can understand; as delicious as they are, I can’t eat them.”
One of the things that has defined (or, oddly, not defined) Avec through the years is its lack of focus on a single cuisine. It’s always been sort of vaguely Mediterranean, but the collection of things on the menu has never fallen into an easy to organize bucket. And over time, different chefs have added different influences. When she was in charge, Koren Grieveson took more of a coastal European approach, while Hendrix added more of a Middle Eastern touch. Patel builds on all of that, but is adding Indian flavors of his own. A recent addition to the menu is a black cod tagine, cooked with eggplant and a curry made with coconut and ground lentils. Shrimp are served with butter made from shrimp shells and a hot sauce made from guajillo chiles and rose petals. The Middle Eastern flavors are still there, however, and Avec makes so much hummus they recently bought a dedicated machine — it cranks out 22 quarts of the stuff a day.
The River North location of Avec was a challenge for Patel when it opened. First, it opened in February of 2021, a forlorn time for restaurants. In addition, the audience didn’t know quite what to make of this new restaurant, which called itself Avec but had actual chairs, room to move around, and a huge open kitchen. Eventually, it became clear to Patel that the restaurants just had different identities. “River North is more of a restaurant you go to for occasions; West Loop is still that neighborhood spot where you can pop in, have a bite to eat and continue with your night,” he explains. It also took time to gain trust; at the West Loop location, the chefs could put just about anything on the menu and dedicated fans would try it; not so at River North. “I would put all sorts of things on the menu and no one would eat them,” Patel says. “It was a place where people came to get dates and focaccia and the pork shoulder.”
Luckily, that’s changed. After a rough initial couple of years, Patel says that Avec River North has hit its stride. The dining room is full and the restaurant has its own set of fans, who love to have meetings or host parties at the larger location. Bar Avec, on the roof, has an entirely separate menu, sharing some of the core flavors of the menu but more focused on bar snacks. Patel hopes that the younger crowd that hangs out there will see it as an intro to the concept, and then visit the restaurants.
One thing that hasn’t changed over the years: the high quality of the products that the kitchen uses and the relationships with farmers and purveyors. Luckily, Patel gets to source his bread and meat from partners like Publican Quality Bread and Publican Quality Meat. Since he was always the guy working mornings when he started, he already knew most of the farmers that sell to the restaurant when he took over. “They said, ‘Oh, it’s Dylan who used to work in the basement,” laughs Patel. It’s been a long road, but Patel has definitely made it out of the basement.