A Bistro from the Accoladed Team Behind Elske Opens in the West Loop with Midwestern-Tinged French Classics

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You’re being watched when you dine at Creepies, the new Midwestern French bistro at 1360 W. Randolph St. from the team behind the neighboring Elske. Narrowed eyes peer at you over the edge of a dish of mussels topped with giardiniera and Pernod foam. Pupils peek around cheesy gougeres. A face squints past half-closed eyelids out of the corner of a tile beneath a counter bar. And when you raise an espresso while indulging in butterscotch custard, you’ll find a suspicious visage hiding beneath your cup.

The effect is more mischievous than menacing; you can’t blame these little line-drawn caricatures (by Jenny Volvovski of ALSO) for keeping a close eye on the playful food emerging from the kitchen of this small West Loop restaurant. The dishes – conceived by Elske chefs and co-owners Anna and David Posey and executed by chef de cuisine Tayler Ploshehanski – are generally French, in a relaxed sort of way that incorporates the seasonality and comfort of the Midwest: tarte flambé with melted leeks and maitake mushrooms has the cracker-thin crust of tavern-style pizza, ham and cheese ooze together in Parisian gnocchi, crepes embrace summer with corn and succotash, tomatoes and peaches mingle with tapenade and labneh. 

Casual French cooking “has always been something that I’ve been drawn to,” says David Posey, who created the savory dishes. “And then being in Chicago, I kind of inherently picked up the flavors of the Midwest, and I’m drawn to that.”

He and his wife Anna, the pastry chef, have wanted to open a place like Creepies for a while. “Let’s find a dingy little creepy building somewhere and open up this small spot,” Anna recalls them joking – they wanted to create a unique, quirky, comfortable space. The ideal location was a building across the courtyard from Elske, the accoladed, Danish-influenced fine dining spot they opened in 2017, but it was occupied until the disruptions of the pandemic. When the space became available, “we grabbed it up, and ‘Creepies’ as the name just stuck,” Anna says.

The space is anything but creepy. Designed by the same studio behind Elske (Boone Interiors), it shares some characteristics – wall-mounted lights, smooth-planed wood – while adding slashes of color in the form of tiles and geometric-patterned banquets.

It took four years to open the restaurant. In that time, Ploshehanski gained experience leading the kitchen and crafting a new menu every week as chef de cuisine at Wherewithall, run by another husband-and-wife team of Johnny Clark and Beverly Kim. When a water main break led Kim and Clark to close the restaurant (it eventually reopened as Anelya), Ploshehanski returned to Elske, where she had previously been a sous chef. Now she’s in charge of Creepies.

She met both Poseys — and the Poseys met each other — while they all worked for various One Off hospitality group restaurants including the Publican, Avec, and the now closed Blackbird. In some ways, Creepies is the Avec to Elske’s Blackbird: a more casual sister spot to a reputation-making Michelin-starred restaurant next door.

Creepies approaches the classic French bistro somewhat sideways. There’s no steak frites — no beef at all, just French fries on their own, fried in clarified butter. Chicken liver shows up not as mousse but accompanying a half chicken that has been cured, poached, and then roasted in a three-day process. Charcuterie is represented by a saucisson studded with pistachio and dried apricot then baked inside puff pastry.

“Sausage-making is one of my favorite things to do, and I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it with David’s guidance,” says Ploshehanski. 

Even in a more casual setting, the team is devoted to craft – most places aren’t making their own sausage and encasing it in labor-intensive puff pastry, or preparing a single dish over three days. But the goal is to be neighborhood-y, with an easy, effortless feel. Beverages are by Elske’s acclaimed team of Monica Casillas-Rios and wine director Emily Sher, with simple, light French-leaning cocktails and a France- and California-dominated mostly natural wine list.  Eventually, Creepies will offer lunch and stay open with drinks and an abbreviated food menu in between lunch and dinner.