Esquire

A reporter’s pause beside a new dining room

A pause before the next question is Cal Fussman’s tool. The James Beard Award winner and Writer at Large is linked here to Esquire, Chicago, where the name now sits over a forthcoming steakhouse on Oak Street. Cal Fussman learned his cadence through newspaper work after the University of Missouri, then carried it through The Miami Herald, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Time, Life and Esquire. His line about the method is plain: “My goal is always to make people forget they’re being interviewed.” That is not restaurant craft in the usual sense, but it belongs near service. Before the byline settled into long-form interviews, Fussman worked as sommelier at Windows of the World in New York, a station where timing, listening and the read of a table have physical consequences. At this Esquire, the published leadership of the kitchen has not yet been named, and Fussman’s presence reflects craft kinship rather than a claim on the pass. The bridge is attention: the ability to let a room loosen enough for the real detail to arrive.

Steakhouse form, Japanese inflection, French base

The announced program for Esquire gives the kitchen a broad frame: a luxury steakhouse with Japanese inspiration and a French foundation. The house has described à la carte service, a shellfish menu and sushi, with the identity still anchored by premium beef rather than a fixed tasting-menu format. That combination matters because it sets several disciplines beside one another. Steakhouse work asks for sourcing, fire, resting and sauce. Shellfish asks for cold handling and restraint. Sushi asks for knife work, rice, temperature and sequence. French technique gives the format its base notes, especially in stocks, sauces and the logic of service. The restaurant is planned for the former Esquire Theater at 58 East Oak Street, with reports describing the project as a flagship from M Street Collective and placing the room in the range of 265 to 270 seats. Those figures make the operation less like a small counter and more like a full machine: pass, bar, cellar, dining room and private-room rhythm moving at once.

The old theater as the room

The room carries its own pressure before a plate lands. The former Esquire Theater is a 1930s-era building in Chicago’s Gold Coast, a visible Oak Street address that has already moved through several restaurant lives. Reports on the project note that this will be the third restaurant in less than 15 years to reshape the sprawling space, which gives the new house both an inheritance and a test. A steakhouse in that shell cannot rely on scale alone. The counter, the pass and the room have to make the building feel occupied by a present discipline, not preserved as a backdrop. The Champagne Room reference points toward a beverage-led kind of luxury, but the named cellar team and list structure have not been made public. For now, the most concrete thing is the frame: beef, shellfish, sushi and Champagne under the Esquire name at 58 East Oak Street.