Avec Expands to the North Shore and The Publican Gets a Refresh as One Off Hospitality Contends with a Changing Restaurant Industry

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The award-winning One Off Hospitality group is opening a third location of its Mediterranean hotspot, avec, on the North Shore. One Off – which is also behind The Publican, Dove's Luncheonette, and Big Star – plans to open the new location in spring of 2026 at 250 Waukegan Avenue in Highwood. At the same time, the group is refreshing the Publican's menu under the guidance of a new chef.

Back in Chicago, Rob Levitt has been named the new chef and butcher at The Publican, which opened as a beer hall-inspired restaurant in 2008 in the then still industrial Fulton Market district of the West Loop. A longtime favorite of food nerds in the city for his and his wife Allison’s restaurant Mado – which opened within months of The Publican – and The Butcher & Larder, Levitt has been at One Off’s Publican Quality Meats since 2019, and will continue to oversee that butcher shop while executive sous chef Kyle Huff takes over the day-to-day operations.

“My true joy comes from developing the people in our kitchens and seeing them grow,” says Paul Kahan, the executive chef-partner of One Off who started what would become the group 28 years ago with the West Loop pioneer Blackbird.

Levitt staged (restaurant parlance for interned) at both Blackbird and the original avec, which opened in 2003, when he was starting his culinary career. When he met with Kahan about taking over Publican Quality Meats, Levitt was already interested in The Publican across the street.

“He had a notebook full of ideas and he was super charged on The Publican,” says Kahan. “He’s an amazing butcher and he nurtured Kyle for many years, and Kyle is just as amazing as Rob was.”

Levitt’s new Publican menu continues to showcase butchery in the form of charcuterie and large cuts of locally sourced meat such as a duck thigh served with plums and dandelion greens or a ham chop with peaches and jimmy nardello peppers. But, as those seasonal summer produce accompaniments suggest, Levitt’s menu also puts a renewed focus on vegetables as well as fish. (Despite its reputation as a meat-centric place, vegetables have long been recognized as a sleeper hit at The Publican; the barbecued carrots with a ranch-like dressing are a classic that remain on the menu.) Badger flame beets are brightened by raspberries and grilled Four Star Mushrooms are balanced by scapes and ricotta salata. Kanpachi crudo joins oysters on the raw menu, while grilled trout is paired with cherry tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, buttermilk, and lobster oil.

One Off is revamping The Publican and expanding to the North Shore as the restaurant industry continues to grapple with struggles that began five years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group’s fine dining flagship Blackbird closed in 2020, and its influential bar The Violet Hour shuttered earlier this year despite consistent sales due to a disagreement with the landlord over extensive repairs. One Off opened a large bakery for its Publican Quality Bread in West Town in 2022, adding a second location in Oak Park in 2023 and a commissary kitchen for catering next door in West Town last year. They began providing food for the Chicago Fire at the Major League Soccer team’s new training center this year.

The suburbs have not been immune to restaurant industry challenges but are seeing more and more ambitious restaurant openings in recent years, including many from Chicago chefs. In addition to high costs in the city, Kahan cites the yearslong construction on the Kennedy expressway as one reason to bring avec to the North Shore, saving residents a traffic-ridden drive. (The Metra’s Union Pacific-North line also runs directly from the original West Loop avec to the new location in Highwood.)

“There’s a lot of great restaurants up there now, and the worry was, ‘People don’t go out late, they don’t drink,’” he says. But “the North Shore is cranking.”

While One Off initially envisioned bringing something like the more casual taco bar Big Star to the northern suburbs, a community meeting revealed a desire for Publican Quality Bread or avec; the partners decided to move forward with the latter, with the possibility for growth into an adjacent property in the future. (One Off owns the building that will house avec.)

“When people like avec, they really like avec,” Kahan says. “They’re kind of nutty about it, and I’m super glad for that.”

Indeed, avec won the top honor at Chicago’s Jean Banchet Awards this year, for Restaurant of the Year. The kitchen is now run by Dylan Patel, a native of the Northwest suburbs who has worked at avec for a decade. He oversees the menus at both the original West Loop location and the outpost that he helped open in River North in 2021, and will do the same for Highwood. Each location has slight variations in the menu to account for the tenor of the neighborhood, and Highwood will be no different.

“Dylan is really exciting from a lot of standpoints,” says Kahan, citing his talent in the kitchen and Indian-tinged approach to avec’s Mediterranean food as well as his personality. “He’s kind and a great leader and everyone loves him,” he says.

Like Levitt and One Off partner Donnie Madia, Patel appeared in the popular TV show The Bear, which takes place in a fictional Chicago restaurant. Kahan hopes both chefs will continue to grow within One Off, perhaps becoming business partners as Publican Quality Bread’s Greg Wade did. 

“I’m 62,” Kahan says. “I’m excited about guys taking over the ship.”