Legendary Club Lago Reopens

Restaurant badly damaged by falling chimney

After being shuttered after a neighbor's chminey collapsed on their roof in March, one of the city's iconic Italian restaurants is re-opening.

Club Lago opened in 1952 under the eatchful eye of Gus and Ida Lazzerini, and it quickly found a niche in providing Northern Italian food to the warehouse district around Superior and Orleans.

After fixing the ruined roof, the second floor and their entire kitchen this year, Guido and GianCarolo are happy to announce that their restaurant will be reopening on Wednesday at 11 a.m.

To show his passion for the business, Guido stopped shaving to protest the forced closure. You can vote on one of the six possible new styles of his beard at the restaurant's Web site: the Red Sox, the Chester A. Arthur, the George Clooney, the Drew Gooden, the Ibsen, or the Amish. Whichever style garners the most votes is the one he'll wear to Wednesday's grand re-opening.

It's a true piece of Chicago, where they "talk theater before a show, sports before a game, and politics before the revolution."

And it's back.

Jennifer Perucca is a contributing writer for TheChiGuide.com.

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