Skokie's New Restaurants Are Being Opened By People Who Already Live There

Amy Feldman spent the first months of the pandemic doing what a lot of people in downtown Skokie did back then: driving past dark storefronts and wondering when something, anything, would fill them back in. She had lived in the village for only a few months when the shutdowns hit. Instead of waiting for someone else to bring a business back to a vacant space on Oakton Street, she decided to open one herself.

That instinct, more than any single opening, is the story of what's happened across Skokie over the past year and a half, from the downtown core at Oakton and Lincoln to the commercial strips further out on Dempster and Old Orchard Road. A handful of storefronts that sat empty through some of the leanest years for suburban retail are now full again, and the businesses filling them share a pattern worth noticing before you assume this is just another suburb catching a restaurant trend: the people signing the leases mostly already live here, or grew up here, or picked Skokie on purpose because they know it.

A Building That Sat Half-Finished For Four Years

The clearest example is the ground floor of the Highpoint at 8000 North, the mixed-use building at Lincoln Avenue and Oakton Street. According to documents from a Skokie Village Board meeting, the retail space inside had "remained in a raw, unfinished condition since completion of the mixed use building in 2022." Four years of a finished building with an unfinished storefront is the kind of detail that explains why a restaurant opening can feel like actual news in a place like this.

Feldman's project, Hummingbird Hideaway, is what finally activated that space at 5118 Oakton St. Getting there required real money. Village documents put the buildout at roughly $356,000, and the Village Board voted unanimously on Jan. 5, 2026 to provide Feldman a $45,600 grant from Skokie's Downtown Tax Increment Financing Rehab Program, a financial incentive created to stimulate development in the area. That is not a rounding error. A public subsidy covering roughly an eighth of the buildout cost is the kind of mechanism that tells you the village itself sees storefront vacancy downtown as a problem worth spending on, not just a market inefficiency that would eventually correct itself.

Feldman brought two and a half decades of food industry experience to the project, having worked with brands like POM Wonderful, Lifeway Foods, and Enjoy Life Foods before deciding to build something of her own. As she put it:

"I've spent over 25 years helping build brands that stand for something."

The restaurant, also marketed as Hummingbird Bowls, serves acai bowls, smoothies and small bites, and includes a monthly community menu program where customers submit their own bowl and smoothie ideas.

Two Restaurants, One Building, A Year Apart

Feldman's project wasn't the first tenant to land in that building. Ascione Bistro and Bar, an Italian restaurant serving family recipes from Southern Italy, opened in the same Highpoint at 8000 North building, at the corner of Lincoln and Oakton. It's owned by Alex Argirov and Lauren Lucchesi, who also run an Ascione Bistro location in Hyde Park. Lucchesi told the Chicago Tribune the Skokie location came from wanting to do "something close to our house... something for our friends, something for our family and people in the area to enjoy."

Two full-service restaurants leasing space in the same downtown building within about a year of each other is not the kind of detail that shows up in a portal listing or a chamber of commerce press release. It shows up when you watch one address closely enough to notice the second tenant follow the first.

What's Actually New Right Now

Here's where things stand as of this month, and where in the village to find each one:

Redhot Ranch is worth a second look because it breaks the pattern in an instructive way, on two counts. It isn't downtown, and it isn't a hometown startup. The space sits on Dempster Street, a commercial stretch south of the Oakton-Lincoln core, and the company already runs locations in Bucktown and Lakeview. Owner Jeff Greenfield told a reporter the Skokie opportunity wasn't part of a growth plan, saying, "We weren't planning a new location; something came up that just sounded like a very good situation." The spot took over the space that once held a That Burger Joint and now shares its building with Oberweis Ice Cream and Dairy, on the same side of Dempster as the longtime Kaufman's Bagel & Delicatessen, with a grand opening on August 19, 2025. That's an established Chicago brand betting on foot traffic near an anchor that's already there, a year before any of downtown's own openings arrived. It's the exception that makes the rest of the pattern easier to see.

The Owners Aren't Discovering Skokie

Caribana Island Grill is the clearest case of a hometown bet, even though it sits nowhere near the downtown storefronts. Owner Bret Paul grew up in Skokie and, after closing an earlier version of the concept in Gurnee when the pandemic hit, chose to bring it back inside the village he's from, setting up on Old Orchard Road near the mall rather than downtown. He was direct about why the location made sense, citing its "proximity to the expressway and the mall, and diverse populations in the village and surrounding cities." That's not a developer's pitch deck. That's someone who already understood the customer base because he'd been part of it.

Feldman's background points the same direction. She's a third-generation Skokie resident, which means her decision to build a business here wasn't a market study, it was closer to a homecoming. Dewey's BBQ Market carries a similar thread, even if the founder's own residency is less documented. Robert Fitzpatrick named the concept after his father, a pitmaster who served North Texas barbecue for over half a century, and chose Oakton Street to carry that legacy forward.

None of this means Skokie is closed to outside investment. Redhot Ranch proves otherwise. What it means is that the storefronts that sat empty the longest, the ones that needed a public subsidy or a personal reason to justify the risk, are the ones being filled by people with a stake in the village beyond the lease.

The Calendar Matches The Kitchen

The same local-first pattern shows up in how downtown Skokie spends its summer evenings. The Wednesdays on the Green concert series runs through August 12 at Village Green, with live music every Wednesday at 7 p.m. The Skokie Farmers' Market, now in its sixth decade, sets up every Sunday at Village Hall from late May through the first week of November. And later this month, Skokie's Backlot Bash takes over Oakton Street and Floral Avenue from August 28 through 30, with top-notch music performances, a large carnival midway, a 5K Run, kid's activities, bingo, classic carnival food, a Sunday pancake breakfast and farmer's market all part of the weekend. The festival's name is a nod to downtown's own history: it pays homage to downtown Skokie's heritage as a silent movie backlot set, by featuring modern-day entertainment.

A village that names its biggest street festival after its own film history, then fills its newest storefronts with residents building on their own family recipes and hometown ties, isn't chasing a trend from somewhere else. It's building outward from what was already here.

If you've been meaning to catch a Wednesday show on the Green, the series wraps up this coming Wednesday, so this week is close to your last chance before it picks back up next summer. If you're weighing whether downtown Skokie's momentum is the kind that holds, the answer isn't in the number of new signs. It's in who signed the leases.

If you're curious how a shifting downtown like this affects home values or timing in Skokie, Ron Ehlers has spent years watching these blocks change and is always happy to talk through what it means for your own plans. Let's Connect.