Doc B's Fresh Kitchen (100 E. Walton St.; www.docbsfreshkitchen.com ) hopes to, indeed, bring something fresh to the Gold Coast area of Chicago.
Guests can enjoy high-end, restaurant-quality entrees in addition to sandwiches, burgers, salads and pizzas in a casual and comfortable setting—and can even watch television while ordering food off a digital menu that has a hydroponic herb garden perched behind it. (Carryout options are available.)
Windy City Times talked with owner Craig Bernstein before the restaurant's opening, as he discussed everything from his father to the eatery's electronic aspects.
Windy City Times: This place is named after your late father?
Craig Bernstein: Yes. My dad was a physician in New York, and he passed away three years ago from brain cancer. So I always wanted to own a restaurant. My father's close friend was Allen Bernstein—unfortunately, no close relation to me; Allen was the chairman and CEO of Morton's Steakhouse. He became my mentor.
When my dad passed away, it just came to me.
WCT: What do you think your father would think of that?
Craig Bernstein: [Scoffs] Ha. You don't want it to be like Wendy's, right? So nobody should know who Robert Bernstein is or was—he was a quiet guy—but I think he'd be so proud of me and what I was able to accomplish. I think he'd be super-proud of me.
WCT: Do you plan on having a chain? I've only talked with you a few minutes, but you have this very ambitious vibe.
Craig Bernstein: Yes, we have big plans—and thanks! Certainly, we need to open one first and make sure it's successful but we believe in the concept. We believe in the environment.
I admire really successful people. When I was in college, I met Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks. I told him I wanted to own a restaurant, and he told me to work at Potbelly; he said, "It's not a traditional restaurant but you'll learn the basics." I sent a generic email to Potbelly; the next morning Bryant Kyle, the president of Potbelly, called me. I told him Howard told me to work at Potbelly, and I ended up working there.
WCT: It's called Doc B's Fresh Kitchen. Talk about the "fresh" part.
Craig Bernstein: Well, everything's made from scratch—made fresh daily. As things deplete, we replenish them. Obviously, with our size, there are more things I'd like to do that we just don't have the capability to do, like bake our own buns. But we pull great people who we believe have the same standards; for example, Bennison's Bakery in Evanston makes our buns and Publican Quality Meats is our butcher.
Everything in our kitchen is made fresh daily. Everything we can't do is made by people who we [trust] to make things fresh.
WCT: And there's a hydroponic garden...
Craig Bernstein: Yes—it's right behind the digital menu board. It's all potted plants; underneath, there's a drip cup with water. They're raised like traditional plants, but there's the drip cup and there are these special rocks that absorb water. It's seasonal; there are some peppers, some rosemary and some sage. It showcases what we're all about.
WCT: Doc B's also has a GPS system to locate diners.
Craig Bernstein: Yes. There's a company called Long Range Systems—it's been around a long time, and was responsible for that vibration system at Cheesecake Factory. If you look under each table here, there are pads with sensors on them. When you place your order, we give you a tracker that looks like a cellphone. You put the tracker anywhere on the table and it links to the sensors underneath and tells the kitchen where you're sitting. When we leave the kitchen, we already know where we're going—it's really efficient.
WCT: I was at a restaurant a couple weeks ago, and the server was walking around, asking different people if they ordered a certain dish: "Are you...?"
Craig Bernstein: [Laughs] We want to be able to showcase a traditional service model but in an order-at-the-counter environment. The one that you described is more on the faster casual side and we want to be more on the sophisticated, full-service casual side.
WCT: How did you decide on this location?
Craig Bernstein: We looked for a long time. We didn't want to be in the Loop, where we'd be busy for just a couple hours out of the day. I wanted a sustainable business, and I wanted we could take care of our employees. We also have a staff who are committed to the brand, and you can't find those people in a place that's busy three hours out of the day.
Also, I think our concept has the ability to change how people eat dinner. I think people struggle about where to go for dinner. There's [another Gold Coast eatery] where people pay $150 for dinner—I think Doc B's provides full quality for [a lot less]; we have $10 cheeseburgers that come with fries or even quinoa salad.
WCT: Regarding the menu, this place covers a lot of ground.
Craig Bernstein: I want people to come here three times a day, seven days a week. We want to be an extension of the kitchen. We want people to have nutritious meals, too. But the menu's constrained—we have not eight fish dishes, but two, but they'll always be seasonal. We don't have 10 options for steaks, but three—a marinated ribeye, a chili-rubbed New York strip steak and a simply grilled filet, which I think covers what anybody might be in the mood for. So our menu, although broad, is restricted so we can execute things consistently. We also have reasonably priced wines and cocktails.
