After Joe Carlucci closed his namesake restaurant in Downers Grove three years ago, almost immediately he began planning another Carlucci’s that would bring him back to the city. Carlucci has been in the restaurant business for 36 years. “There’s always something in building a restaurant that you don’t realize is going to surprise you,” he says.

“My designer and I were laying out our plan, our vision for the place, and we said, ‘What’s this punch in the nose going to be?’ We find out six months later it’s a pandemic. Not the punch we were expecting. It was more like a body blow.”