In fact, the theater-going experience is rooted in its pairing with the meal. It is part of our romance with the stage, and its history. Who could forget that the Algonquin Roundtable was assembled from the ranks of New York theater journalists? Or that Sardi's, the restaurant most closely associated with theater anywhere, came to its pre-tourist fame when Broadway press agents took it up as a lunch place?

Although less auspicious, going to the theater for most of us means going to dinner before (or after) the show. Unlike New York, the soul of Chicago theater has always been its nonprofits, making all the city a stage for pre-show culinary explorations, depending on which company's production you are taking in on a particular evening.

But it's the North Loop neighborhood recently adopted by the Goodman that has, with careful civic engineering, become Chicago's Theater District. Not long ago, downtown theater meant the Shubert, which would inevitably be paired with one of Chicago's vintage establishments—Italian Village, the Berghoff or Nick's Fishmarket. Ironically, with the opening of the new Goodman, and the renovation of The Chicago, The Oriental and The Palace theaters along Randolph Street, the Shubert is now a bit off the beaten path, and so are its classic dining partners.

Fortunately, a rather miraculous improvement in the restaurant scene in and around the new theater district has already taken place. In the last two years, a vanguard of stylish spots, led by the creations of boutique-hotel developers the Kimpton Group, have spawned a thriving downtown nightlife. Mossant is a lively French bistro in the Hotel Monaco, 312 Chicago is an Italian-American restaurant with a growing culinary reputation in the Hotel Allegro, and the Atwood Café, in the landmark Reliance Building (now the Hotel Burnham), is a breathtakingly beautiful space that single-handedly boosts the elegance on State Street. Although quite different in cuisine, each of these Kimpton-owned spots has much in common, including a highly refined sense of style, and a pricing strategy that is consistently in the moderate-high range, with entrées from the mid-teens to the mid-twenties. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises has also joined the action, with its more traditional Petterino's in the new Goodman Theatre building. Petterino's self-consciously hearkens back to the heyday of classic cocktails and table-hopping theatrical celebrities. Amidst its Sardi's-like caricatures and cuisine of steaks, seafood and pastas, Petterino's even offers a "Goodman Martini" and a sandwich named for the Goodman's marquee director, "The Robert Falls."

But the best bet for the dining smash hit of the new theater district lies just across the Chicago River, in Marina City. Bin 36 (pictured above) is a big, beautiful and theatrical space, serving excellent New American cuisine, and earning a reputation for being one of the best wine bars in the city. Bin 36 offers a more formal dinner in the Cellar, including a pre-theater prix fixe menu—appetizer, entrée and dessert for $37. And its Tavern space serves more moderately priced food very late, 365 days a year.

With all the new stages in play, the foundation is firmly in place for the resurgence of a thriving theater district in the North Loop. But as dramatic as the transformation has been, the next hurdle may be the greatest—overcoming the preponderance of dark theaters on a typical night. The current situation finds the Goodman producing a full season, but the encouraging Broadway in Chicago partnership is rotating productions among the Shubert, Oriental and Palace. Even with the occasional show at the Chicago, we sorely need a couple of "Cats" in perpetual production to keep the streets purring at night.

But until audiences build, it is the business crowd that makes this restaurant revival possible. The hours of the business day, however, constricts the relationship between this new breed of restaurants and their theater patrons. Saturdays and Sundays are big for the theater, with daytime matinees bringing double the audience downtown, but restaurant options diminish on Sundays. And pre-theater dinner feeds the stomach, but post-theater dinner nourishes the brain, as the ideas that the best productions can spark should be shared and digested along with the plates. Unfortunately, only Bin 36 and Encore Liquid Lounge cater to the after-theater crowd.

But there's hope. Act Two is just getting under way.

Atwood Café, 1 West Washington, (312)368-1900
Bin 36, Marina City, 339 North Dearborn, (312)755-9463
Encore Liquid Lounge, 171 West Randolph, (312)338-3788
Mossant, 225 North Wabash, (312)236-9300
Petterino's, 150 North Dearborn, (312)422-0150
312 Chicago, 136 North LaSalle, (312)696-2420

Also by Brian Hieggelke

TABLE TALK
The Peninsula Chicago hotel (108 East Superior, (312)573-6616), led by executive chef Gerhard Doll, is set to open two new restaurants this week. Shanghai Terrace, a "contemporary version of a 1930s Shanghai cocktail and supper club" opens on the fourth floor on August 22.
(2001-08-23)

ROADFOOD ESSENTIALS
About ten years ago, I heard about the book "Roadfood." The husband and wife team of Jane and Michael Stern coined the word, or at least earned it, by logging millions of road miles and documenting the best eats in the various editions of the book, which they first published in 1977.
(2001-06-14)

TOONING JAPANESE
The costumes—boys with oversized weapons, girls as feline princesses or sailors in miniskirts—bring a delicious aroma of ambiguity to a crowd already wrestling with the awakening nuances of sexuality in twenty-first-century American culture.
(2001-05-24)