Brewery and Restaurant Prepare to Expand
It goes without question that Chicago’s dining and drinking scene gets bigger and better every day, but this is also true of established restaurants, bars, and breweries literally physically expanding in scope. Revolution Brewing and Fat Rice both have expansion plans in the offing, giving us more to love and more to drink in the coming months.
One of the progenitors of Chicago’s current craft beer craze, Revolution Brewing is about to get a whole lot bigger as the production facility prepares for a massive expansion. The Avondale space is set to receive a 120-barrel brewhouse, which comes with several 800-barrel fermenters and other equipment designed to amp up production capacity to roughly 300,000 barrels annually. To give you an idea of how huge that boost is, Revolution brewed just over 50,000 in 2014. As expansion gets underway, Revolution is moving into the neighboring space and adding a solar array on its roof to generate electricity, as well as increased cold storage space and a wider variety of beers.
The on-site tap room will continue to serve drinkers with 60 taps of Revolution beer, and offer free brewery tours.
One of Chicago’s hottest restaurants is about to get even hotter. Fat Rice has been globally acclaimed since its premiere two years ago in Logan Square, lauded for its inventive and wholly unique Macanese cuisine. Such fanaticism has led to lengthy wait times, however. But Fat Rice’s Abraham Conlon and Adrienne Lo are well-versed at making lemonade out of lemons. In this instance, they’re expanding by opening new operations within its existing space. This means revamping the current waiting room space into a new cocktail lounge and adding a new area of the restaurant that functions as a Chinese bakery by day and “petisco” bar (aka small snacks bar) by night.
The new space will also be able to accommodate larger parties and special events. Look for the new spaces to be implemented by early summer.
Revolution Brewing
3340 N. Kedzie Avenue, Chicago
(773) 588-2267
Website
Fat Rice
2957 W Diversey Avenue, Chicago
(773) 661-9170
Website
