Small Cheval

Patties kept to the short menu

The patties hit the griddle thin, two 3 oz rounds built for speed and repetition. Brendon Sodikoff, chef at Small Cheval in Old Town, Chicago, keeps the room on a narrow brief: burgers, fries, shakes, beer, and little else to blur the station. The place comes out of Au Cheval, the West Loop restaurant that opened in 2012 and made its burger demand part of Chicago dining life. In 2015, Sodikoff launched Small Cheval as the quicker, pared-back answer, a counter-service format with the flavor line held close and the ceremony stripped away.

His clearest bench work in Chicago remains Doughnut Vault, where small batches, precise daily output, and a hard stop on freshness define the method. Small Cheval applies the same preference for concentration to another register. The product is not wide. The hand is in the edit, in refusing the long menu, in making the pass repeatable without letting it feel anonymous. This is burger work as a disciplined station, not a chef’s résumé recited through garnish.

Two 3 oz patties and the pass

The signature order depends on a compact architecture: two thin 3 oz patties, melted cheese, dijonnaise, pickles, onions, and the option of crispy bacon, lettuce, or tomato. The single deluxe cheeseburger follows the same grammar with less weight. Golden fries sit beside it, thin-cut and made for garlic aioli or ketchup, while milkshakes and beer keep the beverage program in the same casual key. Nothing on the plate asks for decoding.

The method is assembly under pressure. The bun needs toast and butter without becoming the subject. The cheese has to soften into the patties while the pickles and onions keep the bite sharp. Dijonnaise, described across the house as garlic mayo or aioli, is the binding gesture, the thing that carries richness without turning the burger into a seated-course object. Small Cheval’s discipline is not invention at every turn. It is the repetition of a short form until the counter can move quickly and still hand over something with heat, salt, and structure intact.

The counter sets the tempo

The Old Town room works at counter-service pace, lively enough that the pass feels closer to a production bench than a dining room performance. Picnic-style outdoor seating, heaters, and a casual crowd keep the place in motion; the atmosphere belongs to people waiting for a tray, finding a table, unwrapping burgers while the grill keeps speaking behind them. The room does not soften the food into occasion. It lets the food stay direct.

That directness matters here because Small Cheval was built to solve a very specific pressure: the desire for the Au Cheval burger without the slower ritual around it. The Old Town counter holds that bargain in public. At Small Cheval, a double cheeseburger leaves the pass with melted cheese, dijonnaise, pickles, and onions doing the work.