Restaurant Roots
Our Restaurant Roots
There’s something magical about a true restaurateur with the innate ability to take in the full restaurant experience in one glance…to greet each customer like they’re an old friend and know exactly what they need to make their night perfect. This describes the beloved Eli Schulman, a 50 year veteran in the business, who strove for perfection and wanted each guest to have only the happiest of memories and enjoy his promise of “Good food always.”
1940 Eli’s Ogden Huddle
It all started in 1940 when Eli noticed a foreclosure sign on his favorite neighborhood coffee shop. Armed with little more than a twinkle in his eye and his mother’s recipes, he bought the place and renamed it Eli’s Ogden Huddle. On the restaurant’s opening day, Eli arrived and found the cook passed out drunk on the floor. Customers were arriving, so he had no choice but to open. The first order was a breaded veal cutlet. Not knowing how to make one, he hurried back to the kitchen to call his mother to get the recipe. The customer loved it, and the rest is history! Soon after, Eli hired a new cook. When that first customer returned and ordered the same dish—he told Eli that he liked the veal cutlet he had the first day even better. Eli had a feel for food. If he could dream it, he could make it.
His big personality, great food, and exceptional care for his customers captured the hearts of Chicago, making his restaurant a beloved meeting place that brought people joy and connection through food. Eli made sure that everyone was welcome, whether they could afford their meal or not. He hung a sign in the window which read “If you’re hungry and have no money, we will feed you for free”, reinforcing his belief that “charity will never bust you.”
A year later, Eli was drafted into the Army Air Corps. The Army turned out to be his culinary school of sorts. While Eli’s brother Nate and sister Bertha ran Eli’s Ogden Huddle, Eli ran air base restaurants in Texas, Colorado, and Utah. There, he learned to serve large numbers of people, bake cakes, and even finagled a way to run soft drinks through the water fountains.
The Huddle Thrives: Expanding to Chicago’s North Side
After World War II, Chicago’s North Side was booming: people were buying houses, expanding their families, and eating out. Eli jumped on the trend and joined the mass exodus north, opening a second location at Argyle and Sheridan. During this time, he married the love of his life, Esther Nettis, who would become Eli’s right hand, managing the books and keeping the place running.
1962 Eli’s Stage Delicatessen
In 1962, Eli made the big move to the Gold Coast, where he opened Eli’s Stage Delicatessen at 50 East Oak Street and quickly became known as the “salami surgeon.” The Deli served breakfast all day and all night, and its six-inch-high hand-cut hot corned beef sandwiches and Eli’s great personality were a powerful draw.
Quickly, Eli’s became a hangout for countless regulars, including local pols, columnists, showgirls, the City’s movers and shakers, and everyone from Joan Rivers to Barbra Streisand and Bobby Short, thanks in large part to the legendary nightclub, Mister Kelly’s, Eli’s new neighbor, located right down the street. At the Deli, Eli himself became a celebrity and a powerhouse. If it was happening in Chicago, Eli knew all about it.
1966-2005 Eli’s The Place for Steak
The Deli was very successful, but Eli had yet another dream: opening a white tablecloth restaurant. In 1966, Eli’s dream became a reality when Eli’s The Place For Steak opened in the lobby of the Carriage House, an apartment hotel on Chicago Avenue just east of Michigan Avenue. For the critical role of maitre d’, Eli recruited Monroe Elfenbein, who had been the host at Mister Kelly’s, and was also a veteran of the Copacabana in New York. Eli kept the Deli open for several years while running the steakhouse, but eventually, a fire forced it to close.
The Deli’s regulars followed Eli to his new restaurant, where they’d find a mound of chopped liver, vegetable crudités on ice, and a bread basket filled with raisin pumpernickel and matzoh on each table (this was literally an award-winning bread basket!). Eli’s The Place For Steak was like a club, a home away from home for its regulars—dark, comfortable, sheltered, with the kind of vibe that let you know deals were being made, secrets were being told, and Eli was at the helm. Eli’s irresistible charm made people clamor for his attention. the ultimate honor: Eli would sit down at a table, rip the menu in half, and announce, “You’ve made decisions all day…I’ll order for you.”
At Eli’s The Place For Steak, liver haters became liver lovers thanks to the famous Liver Eli. And then there were those thick, juicy steaks; Shrimp a la Marc; Shrimp de Jonghe; and countless other dishes Eli imagined and made real. Eli served various desserts through the years, including the ice cream snowball with coconut and chocolate sauce, apple strudel, and his least favorite dessert of all—fresh fruit. (He would say “It can look great, but taste like a potato…and that’s the last thing people remember.”) In the late ’70s, he declared cheesecake would be the signature dessert for Eli’s The Place For Steak. Every day between the lunch and dinner service, he would head to the restaurant’s kitchen to experiment with cheesecake recipes, and he’d often serve up test versions to regular customers to get their opinions.
After about a year of testing, Eli finalized four cheesecake recipes: original plain, chocolate chip, cinnamon raisin, and Hawaiian. Eli had no idea that by breaking all the rules of conventional cheesecake baking..no water bath and a fast and hot bake, he was about to change the world of cheesecake forever by creating a new class of cheesecake known as “Chicago-Style: Richer and creamier than its New York counterpart, with an all-butter shortbread cookie crust instead of a graham-cracker one. The restaurant’s customers loved the new dessert, but Eli wanted to test it in bigger waters. In 1980, he decided to offer the cheesecake at a booth at the first Taste of Chicago, a food festival dreamed up by his good friend and fellow restaurateur Arnie Morton and Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne. The first Taste was a single-day event, held on the Fourth of July on Michigan Avenue in front of the Tribune Tower. No one knew what to expect. The street was packed with people, and Eli’s booth was among the busiest. Eli feverishly cut cheesecake all day long, wearing a suit and slinging his tie over his shoulder
Eli’s the Place for Steak closed in 2005 after 39 years in business. The building was sold by its owner at the time, Northwestern Hospital, to Lurie Children’s Hospital, and today it’s the site of an amazing medical institution, located right across the street from the Eli M. Schulman Playground at Seneca Park, which was dedicated in 1990 to honor the legendary restaurateur.