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Graeme Fehr’s hot, new Chicago restaurant was inspired by a time and place
Graeme Fehr ’08 passed on the bar and opened a bistro.
He once was a real estate attorney in the historic Monadnock Building in the Chicago Loop, practicing in a firm he owned with his two lawyer brothers. The three Fehrs would frequent the Irish pub on the skyscraper’s ground floor and dream about doing other things.
Before that, though, Fehr was a psychology major who came to UTampa from Wisconsin after spending time in childhood at his grandparents’ place in Fort Myers. He later earned an MBA from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a law degree from Ave Maria School of Law in Naples.
Before all the education, though, he was a kid whose mother loved to throw parties.
“My mom has such a love for cooking and hospitality,” Fehr said, and he remembers how he and his brothers would be tasked with helping ready the house for guests, cleaning and setting the table, and then how each boy would have a role, like taking people’s coats when friends arrived.
The fuss and the good memories stuck with Fehr, and they shaped what he calls his philosophy of hospitality: “Making sure people are taken care of. Being aware, attentive. Not pretentious. Being courteous and taking pride in the work you’re doing.”
So as the brothers sat in the pub downstairs from their law offices, they had a solid idea of how they’d do it their way, someday.
“It has to be correct,” Fehr said. “The lighting has to be correct. The music has to be correct. Stuff has to be clean. You have to greet people with a smile.”
Someday came in 2016 with the opening of The Victor Bar, a Parisian-inspired cocktail bar in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood. It came again in 2019 with Love Street, a bar the brothers opened in Lincoln Park, near DePaul University. Both establishments offer what Fehr calls a “classic approach” to doing cocktails in an upscale atmosphere that still has a neighborhood-bar feel.
Lawyering, the food and beverage industry and business ownership all are notorious for high pressure and long hours, and Fehr managed all three simultaneously for a while. “I guess I’m a workaholic,” he admits, but once the cocktail bars took off, the brothers went all-in on their passion and dissolved the law firm in favor of founding UNA Hospitality Group. (UNA is an acronym representing the initials of their middle names. Graeme’s is Alexander.)
Then, an opportunity presented itself. Their old hangout in the Monadnock Building had closed, and the space the pub had occupied for 25 years was vacant.
Bistro Monadnock was born. “It was perfect, and we got to have it with a blank slate,” Fehr said. They worked with the landlord to remodel and restore the restaurant, with careful attention to the architectural lines and the building’s history, something Fehr appreciates as being in common with influences from his Tampa days.
Built in 1891, the Chicago Architecture Center calls the Monadnock an “architectural time capsule.”
“So that puts it in the same time period of Plant Hall,” Fehr said. “It’s a very charming building.”
The bistro, which opened in 2023 and has been named to several of Chicago’s “hottest new restaurants” lists, features French cuisine and a mostly French wine list. Fehr said the menu goes “back to the roots of French cooking” while leaving room for creative inspiration.
Fehr describes Chicago’s Loop, known for banking and business and busy-ness, as changing since the pandemic. More people live there and nearby now, as big office buildings are converted to residential spaces. The transition nicely positions Bistro Monadnock to continue UNA Hospitality’s commitment to a neighborhood feel that welcomes everyone, just like Fehr’s mother’s parties.
“We made sure everyone had a really good time whenever they came over,” Fehr remembers, “so this stemmed from that, and it’s just blossomed into something more.”
When in Chicago, visit …
Bistro Monadnock, 325 S. Federal St.
Love Street, 1325 W. Wrightwood Ave.
The Victor Bar, 4011 N. Damen Ave.
PLAY LIKE A SPARTAN — Graeme Fehr’s favorite ways to spend a day in Chicago
WALK AND WANDER — IN THE SUMMER!
Pick a day, and everything’s going on. There are street festivals, art shows. There’s sporting events. You’re gonna find something. Parks, the Riverwalk, endless amounts of things. It’s a very walkable city here. It’s a really big city, but it feels very small because it’s easy to navigate.
DON’T MISS THE ART AND MUSIC
The Chicago art museum is one of the best in the country, if not one of the best in the world. …They put on events all the time, and right next to it is Millennium Park where they have free concerts all summer long.
EAT THE PIZZA
Whenever an outsider comes to Chicago, they want to compare the pizzas. Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder (2121 N. Clark St.) is a good place to start. That’s a very old-school place — I’m pretty sure they’re probably still cash-only — and their pizza comes out almost like a pot pie.
TAKE IN THE DOWNTOWN LOOP
The theater district is down here. There are so many different shows. And the Riverwalk has expanded tremendously. There are all different kinds of restaurants. There’s kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding. And Chicago architectural tours — I’d definitely take somebody on those.
MORE ABOUT THOSE ARCHITECTURE TOURS
It’s not such a touristy thing because the skyline changes so often. Even if you’re from Chicago, you basically go on one of those tours a summer to stay up to date. The people who do the tours are very knowledgeable and very talented at describing all the buildings. That’s one of the beauties of the city, the art and the eclectic mix of architecture. You get modern mixed with old, and that’s a huge nod to the city planners for choosing which buildings are landmarks, which ones are not, and which new buildings can go up. So, yeah, that’s probably one of my favorite things about Chicago, just the landscape of the architecture, the diversity of it.
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