By Sunday evening, the stein-holding trophies from Old Town Oktoberfest were packed away and the beer garden fencing along Wells at Schiller was coming down. Three blocks north, the storefront at 1551 N. Wells kept its lights on past dark, crews still finishing out a dining room that had nothing to do with the festival weekend. That space opened as Ela Modern Greek Taverna on September 26, six days after the last stein was set down, and it isn't trying to catch festival traffic. It's trying to catch you on a Tuesday morning for coffee, back again Thursday for a gyro at lunch, and once more on a Saturday for a slower dinner.
That's the actual shift worth paying attention to in Old Town right now. The neighborhood's headline events, including the Oktoberfest weekend and the June art fairs, draw attention on their scheduled dates. But the restaurants opening in between those events are the ones rewriting how a Wells Street regular actually spends a weekday, and the two newest ones share a design philosophy that has nothing to do with occasion dining.
A Festival That Bookends the Season, Not the Street
Old Town Oktoberfest just wrapped its second year, running Friday through Sunday, September 18 through 20, on Wells Street at Schiller. The Old Town Merchants & Residents Association hosts it, and this year's addition was a dog parade, costumes optional but encouraged, tickets required because space filled up. Stein-holding competitions ran in heats across both days, brass bands and a Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute act filled the music slots, and the festival's traditions are still taking shape. A festival in its second year doesn't have the muscle memory of the Old Town Art Fair, which has run since 1950 and is one of the oldest juried outdoor art shows in the country. Oktoberfest is still a young festival, and a dog parade was added this year.
None of that is really about restaurants, though. It's about foot traffic on one specific weekend. The more useful story is what's happening on the other 362 days of the year, and that's where the two newest kitchens on Wells Street come in.
Two Kitchens, Built for Every Hour of the Day
Ela Modern Greek Taverna is the more fully formed of the two. According to Hoodline, the restaurant was founded by Shaina Hurley alongside Executive Chef and Partner Daniel Garabajiu and takes its name from the Greek word for "come." The invitation is meant to work at almost any hour. Garabajiu grew up cooking in his family's taverna in Lefkada, Greece, later worked in Mykonos, and built his Chicago career at Nisos, Andros Taverna, and Athena before joining Ela. The menu spans gyros, grilled meats, salads and bowls, fries cooked in beef tallow, Greek yogurt soft serve, and handcrafted coffee, all built around a no-seed-oil kitchen. The space seats about 70 indoors and 50 outdoors, and it's slated to run seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., with later weekend hours still being considered.
That's not a dinner-only concept. A restaurant that lists a coffee stop, a business lunch, a family dinner, and a date night as equally valid reasons to walk in the door is explicitly designing for repeat, low-commitment visits rather than a single planned occasion. It sits about a block from The Second City, which has anchored Old Town's comedy scene at 1616 N. Wells for more than fifty years, which means Ela is positioned to catch pre-show diners and post-show late arrivals on the same night, not just one or the other.
The second addition is quieter but points the same direction. According to WhatNow, FARE, a healthy-food concept with multiple locations already operating around Chicago and in North Carolina, is bringing a new location to 868 N. Wells, on the west side of the street at the base of a luxury apartment building. It lands close to Layla & Ringo's cafe and DJ's Great Room, and right next to Petite Edith, the neighborhood's well-established French bistro. FARE is a fast-casual concept with seasonal dishes for regular, everyday eating rather than special-occasion meals; it's a different response to the same question Ela asks with a sit-down menu: how do you get someone to come back three times a week instead of once a quarter?
Between the two, Wells Street just added an all-day Greek taverna and an all-day healthy-food counter within roughly seven blocks of each other. Neither one is betting on a festival weekend or a single splashy opening night to make its numbers. They're betting on Tuesday.
What This Looks Like on an Actual Wednesday
Old Town's restaurant directory, maintained by the merchants association, already runs deep with dining options for different occasions. Professor Pizza sits next to Second City and markets itself as a pre-show and post-show meal. The Fireplace Inn has held its corner on Wells for decades as a dinner-and-drinks spot. Old Jerusalem and Mama Milano are among the neighborhood's options for family dinners and date nights.
Together, Ela and FARE point to dining options for different parts of the day. Once FARE opens, a resident could start a Wednesday with coffee at Ela, grab a fast lunch at FARE between meetings, catch a Second City set in the evening, and end the night back at Ela for dinner, sampling different neighborhood options throughout the day. That's a different kind of density than a neighborhood adding one more nice restaurant. It's a neighborhood filling in dayparts.
The merchants association's own calendar backs up the same shift. Alongside the annual festivals, OTMRA runs Old Town Progressive Dinner Wednesdays, a recurring weekly event that moves diners between neighborhood restaurants course by course. A weekly dinner series is a different kind of commitment than a three-day festival. It assumes people are already walking these blocks regularly and gives them a reason to do it on a Wednesday specifically, which is the same bet Ela and FARE are making with their hours.
The Corner That's Still Filling In
Not everything on this stretch has a firm date yet. FARE's opening was announced for sometime in summer 2026, with no confirmed date released as of this writing, while Ela's September 26 opening has been locked in publicly for weeks. That gap says something about how this kind of buildout actually happens on the ground. A block doesn't turn over all at once. One storefront gets a firm lease and a hard date, the one next to it takes longer to finalize, and the street changes in stages that only become obvious once you notice two or three of them landing in the same season.
Old Town's next big calendar moment is still months out, the Old Town Art Fair and the Wells Street Art Festival won't return until the second weekend of June. Between now and then, the neighborhood's actual daily texture is being set by what's opening on a random Tuesday in September, not by what's scheduled for next summer. Ela opened its doors on September 26. FARE's sign will go up sometime after. Whichever weekday you happen to walk past 1551 N. Wells or 868 N. Wells, something on that block is very likely already serving.
If you've been watching Old Town's storefronts fill in and you're curious what that means for a specific block or building, Maria Thanasouras knows this stretch of Wells Street the way a longtime resident does. Let's Connect.
