Vernon Avenue's Restaurant Puzzle: Why One Address Keeps Failing While Its Neighbor Finally Works
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Why does one storefront on Glencoe's main commercial block burn through six restaurant concepts in twelve years while the building right next door, after two failed attempts of its own, finally settled into something that sticks? That is the real story on Vernon Avenue this year, and it has nothing to do with the economy, rent, or bad luck. It has to do with what Glencoe actually wants to eat, which turns out to be a narrower answer than most restaurateurs assume.
Start with the two addresses that make the puzzle visible: 668 Vernon and 667 Vernon, directly across from each other, both inside a downtown that is walkable, well-trafficked, and has changed very little architecturally since the 1920s.
The space at 668 Vernon Ave sits inside a 1927 building that Chicagoland philanthropist and entrepreneur Pete Kadens controls the lease on. In September 2021, it opened as Poppy's Social, a casual eatery that lasted nine months. It was replaced by Honey Butter Fried Chicken, a concept with a strong following in the city. Kadens later told The Record North Shore that Poppy's actually outperformed Honey Butter, which surprised him given the chain's popularity in Chicago. His read: the product simply did not fit Glencoe, where residents lean toward healthy, organic food and a good deli over fried chicken.
That diagnosis shaped what came next. In May 2025, Picnic, an order-at-the-counter salad and grain-bowl concept already running in Evanston, opened in half the space. A few weeks later, Mensch's Deli, a full-service Jewish deli with breakfast sandwiches, latkes, and matzo ball soup, opened in the other half, sharing a kitchen with Picnic and giving the combined space a large rear patio. Both are owned by a trio of New Trier High School alumni, Jack DeMar, Eric Kogan, and Kiki Eliopoulos.
The decision to split one storefront into two brands was not aesthetic. It was a response to population math. Downtown Glencoe draws from a village with a population density of roughly 2,341 people per square mile, which makes volume harder to generate than in a denser suburb or in Evanston. Running two smaller, focused concepts out of one address, rather than betting everything on a single big swing, spreads the risk across more reasons for a customer to walk in that day. So far, it has worked. Both restaurants were still open and drawing regulars as of this summer.
Across the street, 667 Vernon Ave has told the opposite story. Since 2013, the address has cycled through a remarkable run of concepts:
Six concepts in roughly twelve years is not a run of bad tenants. It is a location that has never found the thing 668 Vernon eventually did, a format that matches what a small, family-dense, health-conscious village actually orders on a Tuesday night. White-tablecloth Italian, upscale contemporary American, and casual pizza all had their turn at 667 Vernon, and none of them stuck the way a deli and a salad counter have next door.
The third piece of this year's downtown reshuffle is less about failure and more about succession. Meg's Cafe, run for four decades by Barbara Lepman out of 317 Park Ave alongside her catering business, Apple A Day, closed on May 31, 2025. Lepman had served Glencoe diners for 40 years, and her farewell message to the community, posted on social media, described the closing as the end of a long-running family relationship with the village rather than a business collapse.
What happened to that space next is the most interesting local detail of the year. Daniel Rakestraw, a Glencoe native, began his restaurant career at 15 washing dishes at Guildhall, the American bistro at 694 Vernon Ave that has anchored the block for years. He went on to train at Ron of Japan in Northbrook, Sushi-San in Chicago, Kendall College, the Michelin-starred Gage, and eventually Nobu, where he spent a year pressing rice before joining the sushi roster and later oversaw a rooftop sushi bar that grew from 400 to 650 covers a night. In August 2025, Rakestraw bought Lepman's Apple A Day catering operation, and in April 2026 he opened RDK Sushi in the former Meg's Cafe space, a 64-seat sit-down restaurant offering nigiri, family-style appetizers, and hot dishes influenced by his time under the Nobu system. Before RDK, the only sushi in town came from Tori Dasu, served inside Guildhall itself. Rakestraw has said the appeal of coming home is that the North Shore supports its own, a dynamic that matters more in a village this size than it would in the city.
Put the three stories next to each other and the thesis holds up better than any single one of them does alone. Glencoe's downtown does not punish restaurants for being small, expensive, or ambitious. It punishes them for arriving with a concept built for somewhere else. Honey Butter Fried Chicken had a real following in Chicago and still lost to a salad counter. A white-tablecloth Italian restaurant at 667 Vernon lasted about fourteen months while a deli and grain-bowl combo next door has held steady for over a year. The businesses that have never turned over on this block at all, Guildhall, Hometown Coffee & Juice at 700 Vernon, and The Flower Shop in Glencoe, which has operated since 1979, share a common thread: they are all built around routine rather than novelty. Hometown functions as much as a meeting spot for kids walking or biking over after school as it does a coffee shop. Guildhall gave a 15-year-old dishwasher his start and is still standing when four of its across-the-street neighbors are not.
None of this means Glencoe rejects ambition. RDK Sushi is priced and positioned as a destination restaurant, and it opened to strong early reviews. What it means is that ambition succeeds here when it is rooted in something the village recognizes, whether that is a home-grown chef with actual roots in town or a deli format familiar from childhood, rather than a concept parachuted in because it worked somewhere denser.
For anyone walking Vernon and Park Avenues this fall, the practical map looks like this: Picnic and Mensch's Deli share the patio and kitchen at 668 Vernon, RDK Sushi has taken over the old Meg's Cafe space at 317 Park with a small 64-seat room that is already drawing weekend reservations, and Guildhall, Hometown Coffee & Juice, and The Flower Shop continue to anchor the block the way they always have. The space at 667 Vernon, for now, sits as the one open question left on the street, a storefront that has changed hands six times without ever landing on the thing its across-the-street neighbor finally found.
Downtown's dining scene is a small, specific proxy for something bigger about how Glencoe works. It is a village that rewards the familiar over the trendy, the local over the imported, and it does so with more consistency than most North Shore towns its size. That is worth knowing whether you are heading to Mensch's for a Saturday bagel or simply trying to understand what makes this particular stretch of the North Shore tick.
For a closer look at what else the village has going on this season, our guide to Glencoe's cultural calendar covers the Botanic Garden, Writers Theatre, and downtown's events lineup through the first frost. And if Glencoe's blend of small-town routine and lakefront character has you thinking about what it would mean to actually live here, our Glencoe neighborhood guide is a good place to start.
Jena Radnay has spent years watching how Glencoe's downtown evolves block by block, and that same attention to detail is what goes into every listing and every client conversation. Request a Private Consultation whenever you are ready to talk about what's next.
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Jena Radnay, and the focus of her real estate business, is all about people. Radnay’s love for real estate, houses, marketing, and people have allowed her business to grow organically, albeit explosively, in large part from referrals from her extensive network of contacts and connections.
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