Old Town Pour House opened its doors again on August 3, in a room with 285 seats, a full craft beer list, and a menu built for pre-theater dinners. It's a good spot. It's also nowhere near Old Town. The address is 120 N. LaSalle St., in the former City Social space downtown, according to What Now Chicago. The brand that anchored Wells Street for over a decade came back to the Loop instead.
If you've walked Wells Street this year, you've probably clocked the Pour House's absence without quite naming what replaced it. That's the point of this piece. Two very different restaurants have moved into the gap the Pour House left, and neither one looks anything like a gastropub. One is a $155-a-head omakase counter. The other is a health-forward bowl shop that hasn't even opened yet. Wells Street didn't refill its middle. It split.
Twelve Years, Ninety Taps, One Address
Old Town Pour House opened on Wells Street in March 2012 with 90 craft beers on draft, which was, at the time, more than any other bar in Chicago, according to Block Club Chicago. Parent company Bottleneck Management used the concept as a template, expanding it to Oak Brook in 2013 and Naperville in 2016. The original Wells Street location closed in 2024.
Bottleneck told Block Club in June that it was aiming for a July reopening downtown. It missed that target by about a month. When Old Town Pour House finally reopened, on the same corner where City Social used to sit, Crain's Chicago Business reported the new location comes with a menu built specifically for a Loop office crowd: business lunches, after-work happy hours, pre-theater dinners. Nothing about coming back to Old Town.
That's a 12-year-old brand with real name recognition on Wells Street choosing not to reinvest in the neighborhood where it built that recognition. The space it left behind wasn't waiting for another version of itself.
The High End Moved In First
Nearly a year before Old Town Pour House reopened at a different address entirely, a very different concept had already settled onto Wells Street itself. SHŌ Omakase opened at 1533 N. Wells St. on August 12, 2025, according to What Now Chicago. The chef is Mari Katsumura, whose résumé includes stints at Yugen, Grace, and Blackbird. The owner is Adam Sindler, whose family started Kamehachi, generally credited as Chicago's first sushi bar.
The ten-course tasting menu runs $155 per person this season, with an optional sake pairing at $95, per SHŌ's own reservation page on OpenTable. The restaurant was also named a 2026 semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef, Great Lakes Region, a detail confirmed in a local Old Town business guide. Sindler and Katsumura also sat down with Crain's Chicago Business to talk through the concept shortly after opening.
None of that reads like a replacement for a beer hall. It reads like a bet that Old Town diners will pay destination prices for a destination meal, on a residential stretch that used to be known for its patios and pub fare.
The Other End Is Still Arriving
The counterweight to SHŌ is FARE, a healthy-eating concept slated for 868 N. Wells St., a few doors from Layla & Ringo's cafe and Petite Edith, the neighborhood's popular French bistro. Owners Kasia Bednarz and Britni de Leon started the business in 2010, expanded it through a downtown food hall, and have described their approach simply.
"Food isn't just fuel, it's a form of self care."
That's from the company's own description of its mission, as quoted in What Now Chicago's coverage of the Old Town location. FARE's menu leans on bowls, egg wraps, smoothies, and gluten-free breakfast items, not exactly the ribs-and-beer register Wells Street built its reputation on.
As of this writing, FARE hasn't announced an exact opening week. The May 2026 report only said "sometime this summer," and summer isn't over. But the location is confirmed, the lease is signed, and the concept is settled. Whenever the doors open, it will be doing so at the opposite end of the price and format spectrum from SHŌ, on the same half-mile of sidewalk.
Two Directions, No Middle
Put the three side by side and the shape of what's happening becomes obvious.
| Old Town Pour House (former) | SHŌ Omakase | FARE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Address | 100 N. Wells (closed 2024) | 1533 N. Wells (opened Aug. 2025) | 868 N. Wells (expected 2026) |
| Format | Gastropub, 90 beers on tap | 10-course tasting counter | Fast-casual bowls and breakfast |
| Price register | Mid-range pub fare | $155 per person tasting menu | Counter-service pricing |
| Where it landed | Reopened downtown, not Old Town | Stayed in Old Town | Coming to Old Town |
A single mid-priced gastropub used to occupy real estate, literal and cultural, in the middle of that range. What's arrived since isn't a like-for-like swap. It's two concepts pulling toward opposite ends of the menu, both choosing Wells Street as the place to make that bet.
What Hasn't Moved
None of this means Wells Street is unrecognizable. Some of its anchors haven't budged, and they're worth naming precisely because they're the control group against which the SHŌ-and-FARE shift actually registers.
The House of Glunz, described in that same Old Town business guide as the oldest family-owned wine shop in the United States, is still where Old Town's merchants gather. This September it's the site of the pre-Oktoberfest networking event ahead of Oktoberfest on Wells, which runs September 18 through 20, 2026, according to the Old Town Merchants and Residents Association.
The Fudge Pot, a Wells Street fixture, is still run by James Dattalo, who also serves as OTMRA president. Dattalo appeared in the city's "Behind the Business License" video series this year as part of National Small Business Week coverage, per the OTMRA's own site. Old Town Ale House, the dim, unpretentious bar a short walk from Second City, is still the default stop after a comedy show lets out, a pattern documented in Little Chicago Guide's rundown of a typical Old Town evening.
And if you haven't found it yet, there's a small duck pond tucked onto Eugenie Street, between Wells Street and North Park Avenue. It doesn't show up in most restaurant coverage because it isn't a restaurant. It's just still there, the way it's been for years, a couple of blocks off the corridor where everything else keeps changing hands.
The Corridor's Next Six Weeks
Oktoberfest on Wells, September 18 through 20, 2026, will be the first time this new lineup shares the same three blocks at the same moment. House of Glunz and Fudge Pot will be doing what they've always done. SHŌ will be booking its usual two dinner seatings. FARE may or may not have opened its doors by then. Watching where the festival crowds actually stop and linger, gastropub-shaped spaces, tasting-counter reservations, or bowl-shop lines, will say more about where Wells Street is heading than any single opening or closing does on its own.
For now, the takeaway isn't that Old Town lost a bar. It's that when a proven, 12-year-old concept had the chance to come back to the block that made it, it chose somewhere else instead, and what filled the space it left behind split in two directions rather than one.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property along Wells Street, or you're simply curious how a shifting restaurant scene tends to show up in a neighborhood's home values over time, Your Home Flight has spent over two decades reading Old Town block by block. Reach out for a conversation, or request a free home valuation to see what your corner of the neighborhood is worth right now.
