I Won't Bury the Lede. The Breakfast Sandwich Slaps.
Allez built its reputation on one sandwich. The pastry program and the coffee deserve to be in the same conversation.
Co-owner Jason Melamed cooked at Alinea and Blackbird before opening a tiny café on Western Avenue in 2023 as a companion to his neighboring catering company, Ambrosia Foods. The production kitchen is next door, which explains both the size of the space and the precision of what comes out of it. Allez is small. The ambitions are not.
The breakfast sandwich is why most people show up and why there is often a line to prove it. Steamed egg, Gouda, thick-cut bacon, a house-made hash brown, onion aioli, and jalapeño jam on a Martin's potato roll. Around thirteen dollars before tax and tip, which prompts a predictable debate about whether a breakfast sandwich can be worth that. Here is my honest answer: every person I have ever brought here from out of town gets obsessed with it. Allen finds it over the top, which is also an accurate read. It is rich, it is messy, and it does not apologize for either. Whether that tips into too much depends entirely on your appetite and your morning. What is not debatable is that you cannot talk about Chicago's breakfast sandwich scene without talking about this one.
The fried chicken sandwich is good. It does not rise to the level of the breakfast sandwich, and ordering it after you've had the breakfast sandwich will make that gap apparent. Worth knowing before you decide.
Here is what I think is genuinely underreported about Allez: the pastry program. The case is small and the selection rotates, so do not expect the same thing twice and do not expect to see everything on any given visit. That constraint is a feature. What shows up is consistently exceptional. The chocolate chip cookie, when available, is among the best in the city — large soft chocolate chunks, flake salt, gooey-chewy with just enough crunch to hold it together. The pastries broadly reflect the same level of care as the sandwich: technically precise, not showing off, delivering exactly what they promise.
The coffee is where the pedigree of the other co-owner, Andrew Silaghi, shows up. He brought café experience from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Romania, and the result is a program that takes the work seriously. Allez serves Backlot Coffee, sells beans, and trains its baristas to handle both with the same attention given to the food. I have not had a bad coffee here across multiple visits. That consistency is harder to achieve than it looks, especially in a space this small running at this volume.
Allez now has a second outpost inside Cara Cara Club on Kedzie. The original Western Avenue location is the one most associated with the reputation, and the one worth visiting first.
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