Black Briar opens in Chicago with chef Jimmy Papadopoulos

Black Briar opens this month in Chicago's Fulton Market, the return of chef Jimmy Papadopoulos to a city he left five years ago.

The restaurant takes over 201 N. Morgan Street, the former home of Bar Takito, which closed in October 2024. Papadopoulos runs the kitchen with Tim Anderson, the former general manager of Bellemore, as his business partner. It is their first restaurant together.

Papadopoulos built his reputation at Bohemian House and later at Bellemore, two of the West Loop's more talked-about dining rooms, before stepping back from restaurant work for roughly five years. Black Briar marks his return as an owner rather than an employee.

A long bar, a dark marble counter, and a tavern that wants regulars more than reviews.

A bar built for a long night

The room centers on a long, curving bar topped with dark marble, a deliberate shift from the open kitchens that defined Papadopoulos's earlier restaurants. Early menu details point to a bold American tavern: truffled cavatelli sits alongside fat-washed martinis, a combination that reads more clubby than fine dining.

The address itself carries some weight. Bar Takito ran there for years before the pandemic-era slowdown caught up with it in 2024, and the space had sat empty since. Fulton Market has kept filling those gaps, part of Michelin's expanding footprint in American cities once concentrated on the coasts.

Competition on the same block

Black Briar opens within a short walk of Gaijin Okonomiyaki and Tapicozza, two newer arrivals in a neighborhood that no longer has much room for a restaurant to open quietly. Rent in Fulton Market has climbed alongside its reputation, and operators who choose the district now do so knowing the audience is there but so is the scrutiny.

Papadopoulos has not published a full menu or set an exact opening date beyond "late September." What is public is the tone: a tavern that wants regulars more than reviews, built around a bar rather than a chef's counter.

Chicago has no shortage of chefs returning from hiatus with something to prove. Black Briar's test will be whether a five-year absence still counts as anticipation once the doors open, or whether the neighborhood has simply moved on to whoever opened last.