New ‘International BBQ’ Restaurant Aims to Change Wrigleyville

The new international barbeque restaurant Old Crow Smokehouse is taking over two storefronts in Wrigleyville, and the owners say they hope to make the party street into a dining destination.

Slated for 3506 N. Clark St., the new smokehouse will take over Chen’s Chinese & Sushi, but keep the restaurant onboard as a delivery-only business partner. The partnership comes after a lease renewal threatened to shut down Chen’s, even though the owners reportedly do upwards of a million dollars annually in delivery orders.

And the main men behind Old Crow are now strangers to Wrigleyville.

Sam Sanchez and Mike Gonzales are partners at Samco, the restaurant group that owns John Barleycorn at 3524 N. Clark St. and Moe’s Cantina at 3518 N. Clark. St. But with this new restaurant, the duo hopes to make Wrigleyville more than a place to get wild on the weekends.

“The reality is that we have two other ventures on Clark that we can only operate on certain days of the week, so the purpose of Old Crow Smokehouse is to bring people back to Wrigleyville and back to Lake View, not just for baseball games and to go to the nightclubs,” said Samco representative Olivia Pantoja.

"The dynamics of why people come to Wrigleyville have changed. They’re just coming here to drink. They want to bring people back for food."

“We lose money because people only go there during the games and on the weekends,” Pantoja continued. “… It’s not every day that people say, ‘I’m going to Wrigleyville, to Clark and Addison, to have dinner.’”

The former Asian restaurant is undergoing a build-out that incorporates a new, airy expansion where a former parking lot once was. The expansion, which will feature a storefront that can fold open to the street, is estimated to cost almost $200,000, according to the building permit.

Old Crow will just be one block north of upcoming barbeque restaurant Sweet Baby Ray’s, which is also currently under construction. The two will join Milt’s Barbeque for the Perplexed and Wrigley BBQ, both of which opened in Lake View in the last few months.

But while some fear Old Crow may add to the alcohol-fueled atmosphere in Wrigleyville, Executive Director of the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce Heather Way says Sanchez “is a great neighbor and has a proven reputation.”

Along with brining in chef Tony Scruggs from Fox Network’s MasterChef to lead the kitchen, Sanchez already employs Woodstock Cleaning Service to clean the area streets after Chicago Cubs games and weekends, and he employs private security to aid officers on Clark.

In addition, Chen’s will continue doing its massive amounts of deliveries, reportedly via electric bicycles, from its new 3,700-square-foot kitchen, housed in the rear of Old Crow. That’s compared to their old 600-square-foot kitchen.

Pantoja says it’s all about bringing a restaurant atmosphere back to Wrigleyville.

“The dynamics of why people come to Wrigleyville have changed,” Pantoja said. “They’re just coming here to drink. They want to bring people back for food. We want to have more restaurants.

The space is on track to open sometime this summer.

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