Photo: m vie

A honey onyx bar lit from below is one element of a room designed to compliment the food at M Vie, now open in Noble Square.

Dawn Milhouse and her husband, Wilbur, believe they spotted a gap in the Chicago restaurant scene. “What we felt what was missing was simply a grand place to eat,” she says. Finding a space on an appropriately named street, the pair created M Vie (1372 W. Grand Ave., 312-265-0159), now open with a limited menu that should be fully fledged within two weeks.

She says they chose the decor to stimulate the senses, to supplement the taste experience with the food and cocktails, as with the honey onyx bar. “It’s lit, and you want to touch it when you enter the room,” she says.

An experienced consultant helped flesh out the menu, which includes dishes such as short-rib sliders, fried green tomatoes, gumbo, and rib-eye steak, as well as burgers, chicken, and salmon. Themed specials nights might bring lamb chops and pork chops one day and whole red snapper the next. Crème brûlée and Key lime pie are made in-house.

Milhouse touts the bar program, including classic cocktails. “A martini is always gin unless you specify differently,” she says, also citing their Manhattan and margarita.

 The name of the restaurant refers to the initial of the Milhouses’ last name and the French word for life—the life Milhouse. Lucky Dawn Milhouse didn’t use her first initial, too, because D M Vie just makes us think of waiting for our driver’s licenses.