Recently, Pancake the French bulldog (a.k.a. @PancaketheFrenchiee on Instagram), showed up at Siena Tavern (51 W. Kinzie) to indulge in something off the restaurant’s new Puppy Ciao menu.
Although she was outfitted in a halter decorated with little drawings of breakfast foods—bacon, eggs, cinnamon rolls—Pancake ordered (or rather, Haley Channel, Lakeview resident and Pancake guardian, ordered for her) the skirt steak entrée for canines. The $10 meal was grilled with just a touch of extra virgin olive oil and no seasonings, then finely diced and served on a disposable plate.
Silverware was not needed.
“I tasted the meal,” says Channel, who had an iced tea herself. “It was definitely plain, minced steak.”
Siena's designated dog menu is the creation of the DineAmic Group, which is selling its offerings at their four restaurants with outdoor patios: Siena Tavern, Bar Siena, Barrio (the "Barkio" menu), and Public House (the "Pup-lic House" menu). All four menus include three entrée options—chicken, burger, and skirt steak—and a doggy dessert called “Woof-Cream” for $2. “It looks like whipped cream,” says Channel, “but it’s dairy-free. Pancake devoured it."
The Sienas, Barrio, and Public House are offering K-9 menus to anyone who dines on their patios with a dog. So far, they've served food to golden doodles, pugs, bulldogs, huskies, and dobermans; a maltipoo named Olive showed up at Barrio, while a Toronto-based Maltese Yorkshire Terrier named Herman (a.k.a. @Hermaninthehood) breezed through Bombobar, DineAmic’s doughnut and coffee patio, to sample their doggy “doughnut"—a ring-shaped biscuit from Kriser’s Natural Pet store.
“We're a very dog friendly company,” says David Rekhson, principal and co-founder of DineAmic Group. Rekhson and Lucas Stoioff, also principal and co-founder, came to this canine-centric path naturally. Rekhson has a Siberian Husky named Wolfgang and Stoioff has a Red Doberman Pincher named Jarvis. “We love dogs and our employees love dogs, and dog lovers just don’t want to be separated from their best friends,” he says.
Outside of their patios, DineAmic lets its office employees choose any two days of the week to bring their well-behaved canines to work with them. “On any given day, there are four or five dogs trotting around the offices,” says Rekhson. And since they often hold business meetings on their restaurants’ patios, the logical next step was menu for dogs. “You don’t want your dog to feel left out while you’re eating, and you can’t feed him truffle pasta," says Rekhson. "So this small, simple plate menu for them was an easy idea.”
So far, DineAmic hasn't seen any brawls between dogs—and a canine has yet to thrown a fit watching some dog across the patio get its steak first. If it happens, Rekhson says, “the dogs will have to take it up with their owners.”