Our story
Opened
March 2019
Seats
40 at tables, 12 at the bar, 24 in the back
Getting here
Logan Square Blue Line, four minutes
Marta Ferri learned to roll sfoglia on her grandmother's kitchen table in Modena, a pin as long as her arm and a sheet thin enough to read through. She cooked her way through Bologna and Parma for eight years, then came to Chicago in 2014 to run the pasta station of a big West Loop kitchen.
In 2019 she and Davide Russo took over a bakery on Milwaukee Avenue that had sold bread for sixty years. They kept the brick wall of its ovens, put forty seats in front of it, and called it Lume, the word for lamplight. The pasta is still rolled every afternoon at three, from Illinois-grown flour and eggs from a farm in Kankakee County.
Pasta rolled by hand, every afternoon. A candle on every table, a seat kept at the bar, and nothing frozen.
Closed Mondays, so the dough can rest and so can we.
Who you'll meet
- Marta FerriChef and ownerModena-born, eight years in the trattorie of Bologna and Parma. Holds the City of Chicago food service sanitation manager certificate.
- Davide RussoWine and the roomWSET Level 3 in wines. Keeps a list of 120 Italian bottles, a third of them under $60.
- Noor HaddadPrivate dining and eventsPlans every back-room dinner and wine dinner. Replies within one business day.
- Every managerAllergen trainingIllinois allergen awareness training, renewed every three years, and a written plan for coeliac guests.
Logan Square
The trains have run here since 1895, and the boulevards still meet at the eagle on its column. We're four minutes from the Blue Line, on the stretch of Milwaukee where the bakeries and taverns used to be. Come early on a Tuesday and you'll get a seat at the bar.
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