Restaurants for Opera Patrons to Open at Civic

By Amy Mikel in News on Jun 20, 2008 5:18PM

If you are already drawing crowds to your venue for longish evening performances, you might as well capitalize on that fact by running some kind of restaurant or eatery directly nearby. Examples: the Rhapsody Restaurant inside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Symphony Center” complex, or the revenue-generating shenanigans of the Park Grill in Millennium Park.

Lyric Opera is finally following suit, recently purchasing space inside the Civic Opera building for both a small ground-floor restaurant and a larger restaurant off the Opera House’s third-floor upper lobby. With plans to open both spaces in December, Lyric is looking to give their patrons more opportunities for “dining and socializing” during intermissions and before and after performances. Buone notizie!

Until then, the Graham Room dining club is available privately for annual donors of $7,500 or more (Bah!). The rest of the lowly opera patrons must satisfy their hunger and thirst with a bag of chips and a pop from the Lyric’s snack stands, or going across the street to McDonald’s – which, being closed on Sundays, possibly caused this Chicagoist writer to bitterly writhe in hunger for two hours of a performance.

Image via fjsjr