• Michael Gebert
  • Michigan Avenue windows in the lobby at the Chicago Athletic Association

A couple of weeks ago there were events showing off the renovated public areas of the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, opposite Millennium Park, and I could have gone to the ribbon cutting with Mayor Emanuel, but it was a hectic week and, anyway, I don’t really like crowds. (Hold that thought; it will be ironic in a minute.) So I was pleased when Farmhouse Tavern’s Emily Kraszyk picked Kristine Antonian, pastry chef at the Cherry Circle Room in the CAA, for the next Key Ingredient; here would be my chance to check out the renovated 1890 club turned boutique hotel, which has a host of new restaurants ranging from a Shake Shack to the Cherry Circle Room, a traditional dining space in the club now operated by Land & Sea Dept. (Longman & Eagle, Parson’s, etc). Julia Thiel set up the shoot for yesterday—and then the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, and a parade and celebration were announced, and I belatedly realized that I’d be going downtown for a shoot on Michigan Avenue right in the middle of the biggest crowd of the year.

  • Michael Gebert
  • Cherry Circle Room

The materials for the reopening portray the Cherry Circle Room as a storied Chicago space, like the Pump Room or the Cape Cod Room at the Drake, but I have to admit that even as a devotee of old Chicago, I had never heard of it. (A space in a private club can only get so famous, I suppose.) Anyway, it’s a handsomely swank wood-paneled room, much more 1940s-’50s than the 1890s spaces around it, with a restaurant operated by Land & Sea Dept. under Peter Coenen, who did Key Ingredient back when he was at the Gage. Much like that Michigan Avenue trendsetter of a few years back, the menu is kind of upscale comfort food with retro touches (inspired in part by old menus for the space, they say). Judging from it, the emphasis here is on the “you’re gonna pay Michigan Avenue prices” part of upscale, perhaps. But after pretending to aristocratic status all morning, I could hardly complain if a lobster roll hit $23. (I paid for that myself.)