A Gourmet Oasis: Provenance Food and Wine
By Anthony Todd in Food on Oct 9, 2008 3:09PM
Lincoln Square is one of our favorite shopping neighborhoods in the city. It’s filled with independent businesses of all shapes and sizes and has two coffee shops that we love. Last Saturday, we realized that we’d never really ventured beyond the “main drag” of Lincoln Square – the area between the big gates – and decided to walk around a bit. It’s a good thing too, or we’d never have discovered Provenance Food and Wine’s Lincoln Square location (2312 W. Leland, 773-784-2314). The sister store to Provenance's Logan Square location has been open for a year.
Provenance is a specialty food store, carrying everything from breads and seasonal fruits to wines, artisanal cheeses, ice creams, frozen fish, meats, oils and vinegars. This variety is one of the things that makes Provenance so much fun. Rather than a typical “gourmet store” filled with packaged ingredients, Provenance feels like our ideal grocery store, filled with the best of everything. They manage to pack an amazing amount of goodies into one very small store. Many of these are local products, including Chicago microbrews, Red Hen breads, Illinois-made chocolates and caramels and many others.
The other thing that we love about Provenance is their accessibility. They are not a store filled with stuff that no one can afford. You can pick up a new, exciting ingredient for under $15. Provenance brags about their wine selection, which they call “affordable everyday wines,” priced between $10 and $25. We bought a bottle of Round Pond Meyer Lemon syrup to make soda with ($17) and Das Caramelini orange & honey caramels from Highwood, IL ($5). We also spotted a line of wonderful flavored salts by Casina Rossa, which were $10 cheaper at Provenance than they were when we bought them at Williams Sonoma.
Next time you’re in Lincoln Square, give them a look! The staff is friendly, the prices are reasonable and the store is gorgeous – what more could a foodie want?
Provenance's Lincoln Square store is open Tuesday-Friday from noon-8pm, 11am-8pm Saturday and 12pm-7pm Sunday.