This year marks 30 years of business for the Chew Chew, Riverside’s upscale dinner establishment at 33 E. Burlington St.
For the occasion, the restaurant is dedicating the second half of the year, beginning in July, to celebrating itself. But first, let’s look back at its history.
The restaurant opened in December 1996, but owner and executive chef Scott Zimmer said it morphed into its existing form over the first 10 years of business. The original plan, he said, was to open a cafe in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood, until the property he had in mind got bought out from under him.
“It was maybe a blessing. I was left without a job and a business plan, without a location, and I started scratching my head,” Zimmer told the Landmark. “One of my old chefs that worked for me on a previous property lived in Riverside … I took the long drive out from Wrigleyville, came into Riverside, drove around the neighborhood, went to the library, started to do some research about the community and the demographics. I looked at the train and how many trains were coming in and out, and it started to get the wheels rolling a little bit in my mind.”
From there, Zimmer’s vision for the Chew Chew became “a coffee shop that had the support of a full kitchen,” with plans to open multiple locations, all near train stations in the suburbs. That’s where its name — a pun on, you guessed it, the “choo choo” sound trains make — and train-themed decor that persist to this day came from.
Zimmer said the original concept got him the investment necessary to get the Chew Chew off the ground at its first location in the historic Arcade Building, but it only lasted a year before change was inevitable.
“I think we had a home run with the idea, quite honestly. I thought the train proximity, the food menu that we designed and the quality of the coffees that we were pouring were great,” he said. “It was very, very, very long days, getting to the store at 6 in the morning, leaving the store at 10, 11 at night, but we just weren’t generating enough dollars to maintain that concept in a location like Riverside.”
In the course of that year, Zimmer said he noticed a niche the Chew Chew could fill that was otherwise lacking in Riverside: a dinner restaurant.
“There was a complete void of any restaurant in Riverside that was doing that. Coffee was a convenience, and people enjoyed the novelty of being able to come get breakfast on the weekends in Riverside, but what people were really lacking was a dinner restaurant,” he said.
He approached village officials about obtaining a liquor license and said they approved it at a village board meeting the very next day, catalyzing the Chew Chew’s change from a cafe to an upscale dinner restaurant.
“We converted our coffee bar area into more what is like a traditional bar where you can get a cocktail and wine and a beer. We changed the menu around pretty quickly,” he said. “The restaurant exploded. Within a very short period of time, we knew we had made the right transformation.”
The blessing of the new success also became a curse in figuring out how to manage the restaurant’s growth and volume of customers, Zimmer said. The original location sat only 55 people, with 30 or 40 more able to sit outside in the warmer months.
“We were a very small, intimate place, so people learned to arrive early and make reservations,” he said.
Then, trouble came knocking 10 years in, when the lease for the original location expired, and the landlord refused to give the Chew Chew a renewal at a fair rate, Zimmer said.
“When I was in my 20s, I thought a 10-year lease was an eternity, and it turns out that it’s not. For restaurants that are serious about longevity, a 10-year lease turns out to be a bad thing,” he said. “We tried for almost a year to keep Chew Chew in its original location. We tried to buy the building. We tried being nice. We tried sending letters from an attorney. There was really no viable way for us to stay where we were.”
While Zimmer and his staff looked near and far for a new location, Lady Luck smiled upon the Chew Chew when the owner of a travel agency that formerly operated at 33 E. Burlington St. was seeking to change industries due to the rise of self-booking travel online.
“I walked down to the bank, and they were on board. That was back when you could shake hands on a deal and get things done,” he said. “After months of exploring different opportunities outside of Riverside, it turned out that the best opportunity for us was to stay in Riverside.”
Now, the Chew Chew has operated in that spot for 20 years, and only 10 years ago, Zimmer opened up Sawmilly, a sandwich shop, next door, when another stroke of luck meant the parcel belonged to the same bank with which Zimmer had financed the Chew Chew.
“I thought having a second store where I could take some key individuals and put them in leadership positions and let them grow as themselves would help me retain some of my good people,” he said.
While Zimmer acknowledged the success of his neighboring restaurants, he said he hasn’t yet had time to reflect on the weight on it.
“We get complimented for our longevity, and people call us their favorite restaurant, but the restaurant business is kind of funny. To use a football analogy, you always feel like you’re in the red zone, about to score a touchdown, but you’re always fighting to get there,” he said. “When you’re in the game, there’s no time to rest. You’re always having to make an improvement, make a change, get a new hire trained, perfect the dish, change the seasoning or find a better vendor for a new product. … To me, it feels like we’re still doing the same thing we’ve always done.”
