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BUCKTOWN — An all-day cafe and wine bar serving breakfast, lunch and shareable dinner plates opens Friday in the former Izakaya Mita location in Bucktown.
Pompette, 1960 N. Damen Ave., will feature to-go options and sit-down service throughout the day, as well as bar seating.
The restaurant is a joint venture from longtime Chicago chefs Ashlee Aubin, Aaron Patten and Katie Wasielewski. Collectively, the group has worked at some of the city’s most celebrated restaurants, including Alinea, Wood, Salero and Moody Tongue.
Patten and Wasielewski are taking the reins in the kitchen, while Aubin will serve as general manager with a focus on the restaurant’s wine program.
Credit: Reilly Drew/Provided
Credit: Reilly Drew/ProvidedThe menu’s breakfast and lunch offerings include quiche and a farro and swiss chard salad, as well as a range of pastries like a butter streusel coffee cake baked in-house. The restaurant will also serve baked goods from Aya Pastry in West Town.
Dinner options feature a buttermilk fried quail, beet falafel and smoked salmon blinis. The restaurant will have 40 seats in the dining room and 10 at the bar.
“In the evenings it’s going to be more of a wine bar. [We’re] serving small plates, charcoal grilled food, very seasonal, local,” Aubin told Block Club in September.
For dinner service, Pompette will tailor its menu to complement the restaurant’s focus on “Old World” natural wines — specifically from France, Italy, Spain and Germany.
Its cocktail offerings will include a house Bloody Mary, a spritz, and a range of vermouths, amaros and other liqueurs.
Credit: Reilly Drew/ProvidedThe restaurant is taking over the former home of Izakaya Mita, a beloved Japanese restaurant that closed in February at the corner of Damen and Armitage avenues after co-owner Brian Mita died of cancer in late 2021.
Mita started the restaurant in 2014 with his mother, Helen Mita, as a tribute to his father, Shiyouji, who was a manager at a suburban Japanese steakhouse for years.
Pompette will be open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. Seating is first come, first serve.
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