Lula Cafe Invented the Brunch You've Been Eating Everywhere Else
The Logan Square institution that helped define a neighborhood and pioneer farm-to-table dining finally took home its James Beard in 2024. Twenty-five years in, it still has a two-hour wait on weekends.
When Jason Hammel and Amalea Tshilds opened Lula Cafe in 1999 on Logan Boulevard, the neighborhood was a completely different place. They built the restaurant on a shoestring budget with thrifted furniture and a bohemian DIY ethos, and they proceeded to pioneer two things that now feel completely obvious: the cheffy brunch, where daytime dining gets the same precise sourcing and menu discipline as a fine-dining dinner service, and the casual farm-to-table restaurant, where direct relationships with Midwestern organic farmers produced high-concept seasonal food without the stuffy tablecloths or the price tags that usually come with it.
If Lula doesn't feel as exciting today as it once did, that's because everyone else caught up. That is not a knock. That is the highest possible compliment.
The interior still looks exactly like what it is: a room that was built carefully on a budget and has been lived in hard for twenty-five years. Thrifted furniture, worn surfaces, a bohemian energy that could feel tired but instead feels broken in. Like a great leather jacket that fits just right, or your favorite jeans that hang perfectly but have needed a patch or two along the way. You feel good being in there. That is harder to manufacture than any renovation.
In 2024 Lula won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Hospitality. They had been nominated for Best Chef Midwest multiple times over the years without taking it home. The Susan Lucci of Chicago restaurants, finally accepting her Oscar. It was deserved and overdue in equal measure.
The food is easy to enjoy and genuinely good. Brunch brings delicious omelettes, seasonal ingredients done thoughtfully, a breakfast burrito worth ordering, and a rotating menu that rewards repeat visits. Dinner pastas are excellent and the classics that have survived decades on the menu have survived for obvious reasons. The kitchen is also genuinely thoughtful about dietary restrictions, which means bringing a group with specific needs is never a negotiation.
They don't take reservations for brunch. If you're not there early, you are waiting, and the wait can stretch to two hours on a good weekend morning. If that's not the morning you want to have, the farm-to-table ideas Lula seeded have taken root in restaurants within two blocks. You have options. But if you can wait, wait.
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