Before Mystic Celt, Amazon Books, Vuori and Arc’teryx, a familiar stretch of Southport Avenue was home to Bistro Zinc and its street-facing Café Zinc.
Opened in 1996 at 3443 N. Southport Avenue, Bistro Zinc was part of the neighborhood’s growing restaurant scene at a time when Southport was better known for independent businesses and dining than the national retail stores that line portions of the street today.
The restaurant brought a French bistro experience to Lakeview, with classic dishes, a neighborhood atmosphere and a prominent storefront. Its more casual front section was known as Café Zinc, a name longtime residents may remember from the signage above the windows.
A historic nighttime photograph of Café Zinc captures a particularly memorable version of the old Southport streetscape: a cream-colored façade, large windows, the simple “café zinc” lettering and trees wrapped in twinkling lights. The image offers a glimpse of the corridor well before its later retail transformation.
Bistro Zinc was associated with Carl Segal and Casey Eslick, and its early kitchen was led by French chef René Bajeux. Accounts of the restaurant recall dishes such as steak frites, duck confit, roast chicken, lamb, quiche and crêpes. Its design drew on traditional French bistros, including a zinc-topped bar and dining rooms extending toward the back of the property.
The Southport restaurant closed in January 2002. The name lived on at a second Bistro Zinc location at 1131 N. State Street in the Gold Coast, which had opened in 1998 and remained in business for many years afterward. The two locations are easy to confuse in old photographs, but the Southport and Gold Coast restaurants had distinct storefronts and histories.
The former Southport bistro then entered another chapter. Mystic Celt, the Irish pub that followed, became a neighborhood fixture before closing in 2016. Amazon Books opened in the space in 2017 and closed in 2022. Today, the former property is occupied by Vuori at 3443 N. Southport and Arc’teryx at 3441 N. Southport.
From French bistro to Irish pub, bookstore and apparel retailers, it’s an extraordinary amount of change for one Southport address. For anyone who remembers Café Zinc’s windows or dinner at Bistro Zinc, these photographs preserve a very different era of the neighborhood.
Do you remember Bistro Zinc or Café Zinc? What do you miss most about Southport Avenue in the 1990s?