Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
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SO MANY DINNERS (SO LITTLE TIME) The Chicago legend celebrates its 80th birthday. Cape Cod's interior is still similar to when it opened in 1933. a moment in time AS A WINDY CITY DINING LANDMARK. BY ARI BENDERSKY PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN KIRKMAN O THE DRAKE HOTEL'S VENERABLE CAPE COD ROOM CELEBRATES 80 YEARS "The 80th anniversary is an opportunity to reintroduce the Cape Cod room to Chicagoland. —TED DASKALOPOULOS " n December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, bringing an end to Prohibition. It couldn't have come at a better time for Chicago brothers John and Tracy Drake, whose new seafood restaurant, the Cape Cod Room, opened December 6 inside their eponymous hotel at the base of the Magnificent Mile. With its low-lit nooks and New England– inspired nautical theme, the Cape Cod Room soon became a magnet for visiting celebs like Henry Fonda and Mickey Rooney, rivaling the Pump Room as one of the city's most hallowed haunts. Everyone would pop by The Drake, grab a seat at the wooden bar, where guests like Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio once carved their initials, and cavort while savoring a cocktail and just-shucked oysters. Eighty years later, the restaurant (now named, simply, Cape Cod) is still an attrac- tion, as one of the grandes dames of the hasn't changed much: taxidermic fish and crabs dot the walls, copperware hangs from the ceiling, Cape Cod–engraved pewterware adorns the tables, and veteran servers like Steve Spanos (53 years) and Spyros Theofanis (40 years) still fillet Dover sole tableside while regaling guests 72 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM with stories of the celebrities who once sat at their table. "It was absolutely the place to be, as the whole Drake was," says socialite Hazel Barr, recalling the restaurant's heyday in the '50s to '70s. "You'd say, 'Meet me at the Cape Cod Room,' and we'd have a drink there." Even in the face of 21st-century trendiness, the room's old-school splendor still charms, thanks to its enduring traditions. Once seated at a table, guests' water glasses are filled with ice from a stainless-steel bowl, and a server offers warm greetings and recommends one of the restau- rant's classic dishes: iconic Bookbinder soup, a tomato-based broth studded with red snapper; garlicky Shrimp de Jonghe (a Chicago origi- nal); steamed Maine lobster that the room captain gladly cracks; the signature Dover sole ("without a doubt" the most popular dish on the menu, according to Executive Chef Baasim Zafar); and sides of decadent city's dining scene. Tucked away in the first Maine lobster mashed potatoes. floor of The Drake hotel, the dining room For Kirk McKie, Cape Cod is about family. She has a relationship with the restaurant dating back to the 1940s, when her grandmother would spend winters living at The Drake and her father, Lawrence Williams III, then living in Lake Forest, would visit his mother and they'd dine here. continued on page 74 Spyros Theofanis has worked at Cape Cod for 40 years.