Rice N Bread Is Two Restaurants. Order From the Right One.
A Korean American diner in Wrigleyville with real history and a menu that works when you know where to look.
The space at 3242 North Broadway has a longer story than most people eating here know. This was Hamburger King, a Japanese American diner that opened in the 1940s and became the unlikely home of the akutagawa, a dish with a Chicago history worth reading before, during, or after your meal. The full piece is on the site. The short version: new ownership took over in 2013, rebranded it Rice N Bread, updated the menu and décor, and kept serving a neighborhood that had been coming to this corner for decades.
The name describes the split personality accurately. Rice for Korean comfort food: bibimbap, sundubu, kimchi jjigae, bulgogi, galbi, Korean fried chicken. Bread for the American diner side: eggs, pancakes, burgers, sandwiches. The menu bridges the two with dishes like bulgogi and eggs over rice with gravy and Korean-flavored burgers. It is a genuinely interesting concept for a neighborhood diner and it works about half the time.
The half that works is the Korean side. The food is solid, honest, and reasonably priced for Wrigleyville, which is a neighborhood that does not always make that combination easy to find. For cheap, good, quick Korean in this part of the city, Rice N Bread is one of the better options available. The akutagawa is the thing I keep coming back for specifically. Of all the places in the city serving it, this version has the most flavor, a rich gravy that earns its history. That is not a small thing for a dish this tied to Chicago.
The American diner side is where the restaurant struggles and where expectations need adjustment before you order. The pancakes are the most striking example. They look right when they arrive and eat completely wrong. Dry in a way that makes them difficult to finish, which is a hard failure for a dish that is mostly flour, butter, and eggs. The rest of the American menu runs similarly unremarkable.
The move here is straightforward: stay on the Korean side of the menu, order the akutagawa, and treat this as what it actually is. A neighborhood diner with a specific strength and a broader menu that does not match it. In a Wrigleyville landscape dominated by sports bars and basic American fare, that specific strength is worth knowing about.
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