The Owners of Headquarters Beercade Unleash a co*cktail Restaurant Plush With Mixology Theatrics (2024)

After six months of anticipation, the owners of Headquarters Beercade have launched a new co*cktail den around the corner from their arcade bar, just north of River North.

Chireal Jordan and Brian Galati, who also own Machine, the Instagram-friendly floral phantasmagoria in Wicker Park, have spent more than two years creating Dearly Beloved, which opened Friday, June 14 at 900 N. Franklin Street in the former home of French dining stalwart Kiki’s. The longtime friends and business partners have until now kept most details under wraps, but are unabashed about their ambitions for the new “co*cktail restaurant” — their latest and most elaborate venue yet.

“We really want to rub elbows with the big dogs,” says Jordan, who notes that he and Galati spent about a year and a half on research trips around the country and the world. “We want to compete not just locally, but nationally.”

Marisa Klug-Morataya/Dearly Beloved

Armed with more than two decades of experience in Chicago hospitality, the partners see Dearly Beloved both as the culmination of what they’ve learned and a rare opportunity to unleash Aneka Saxon’s most outside-the-box ideas for drinks featuring lesser-known distillers and esoteric ingredients. Saxon is a Violet Hour alum and Machine’s lead bartender. Her opening offerings include the “Captured Shadow” (makrut lime-infused Kyro dark gin, agave, absinthe, coconut chai foam, citrus dust) and “Beautiful and Damned” (Ritual Sister smoked pineapple, Amara Amaro D’Arancia Rossa, Field Trip squash, dandelion honey, fenugreek).

Jordan wants patrons with open minds and the willingness to try unusual spirits and flavor combinations. Still, those seeking a more familiar tipple can order from a lineup of classic co*cktails with slight twists like Pisco Sours (Logia Acholado pisco, tangerine apricot oleo saccharum, quail egg, juniper berry) and espresso martinis (Tenjaku vodka, Good Liquorworks coffee fruit vodka, Big Shoulders espresso, mascarpone, Faretti biscotti liqueur).

Marisa Klug-Morataya/Dearly Beloved

Marisa Klug-Morataya/Dearly Beloved

Dearly Beloved’s menu also attends to a growing demand for tasty, well-made nonalcoholic drinks — a phenomenon Jordan understands well, as his fiancée is expecting their second child — with booze-free concoctions like Last Straw (Seedlip spice, chicory coffee, shiso, lavender, Madagascar vanilla). “We don’t want Shirley Temples on this menu — we wanted co*cktails that you can’t tell are alcohol-free,” he says.

As the partners’ coinage of “co*cktail restaurant” heavily implies, drinks are the main attraction at Dearly Beloved, but Machine executive chef Kristofer Lohraff offers selections that are heavy on vegetables in fun and unexpected forms. Dishes include carrot mochi (coconut curry, sesame, ginger), cigar-shaped Potato and Caviar (potato pave, malt vinegar, burnt shallot), French onion ramen (short rib, French onion soup dashi, fontina). The latter is particularly notable as Chicago is seeing an uptick in surprising cross-cultural ramen inventions like avgolemono ramen at newish Mediterranean restaurant Tama in Bucktown.

At 6,000 square feet, Dearly Beloved is divided into various tiers and sections, seating 60 at the bar and 94 in the lounge. The aesthetic rides a narrow fence between eeriness and elegance as moody lighting filters through glass chandeliers. An elaborate Victorian metal railing flanks an elevated section and ornate, otherworldly artwork fills the walls, punctuated by a 2,500-pound sculptural centerpiece above the back bar. A visual vignette of a woman in two forms — masked and unmasked — it extends two-and-a-half feet from the wall and taps into the sexy-yet-sinister masquerade style of Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 thriller Eyes Wide Shut.

Marisa Klug-Morataya/Dearly Beloved

Marisa Klug-Morataya/Dearly Beloved

A dozen years have passed since Jordan and Galati founded ultra-casual arcade bar Headquarters Beercade in Lakeview and the partners say they’ve grown significantly as operators over the intervening years. With Juneteenth being more widely recognized, Jordan says that Chicago’s hospitality scene has also evolved, especially for Black hospitality entrepreneurship following the racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.

“I [once] felt very painted in a corner with a handful of other [Black] operators for years,” he says. “Now I’m seeing more people of color opening on the North Side — people I don’t know are getting more opportunities to get loans and open up. It’s not like fixed everything and now it’s an even playing field... we’re probably decades away from that, but I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

Dearly Beloved, 900 N. Franklin Street. Reservations via OpenTable.