Bar Tre Dita is Now Open at The St. Regis Chicago

Posted in Projects on 12 April, 2024

The bar is a collaboration between award-winning Chef Evan Funke (Funke, Mother Wolf, Felix) and Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants.

Tre Dita marks the Los Angeles-based chef’s first Chicago restaurant. Italian for “three fingers,” Tre Dita is a nod to the precise thickness of a properly cut bistecca Fiorentina, which the “cucina Toscana” serves from its open-hearth, wood-fired grill, along with handmade pastas and more. Located on the second floor of The St. Regis Chicago, designed by award-winning architect Jeanne Gang, Tre Dita offers sweeping views of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River in Chicago’s Lakeshore East. Tre Dita is open for dinner service seven nights a week with reservations available through OpenTable.

At the heart of Tre Dita, which Vetrina Toscana has designated as the first certified Tuscan restaurant in the United States (more info here), is Funke’s renowned temperature – and humidity – controlled “pasta lab.” As guests pass through an arched walkway leading into the restaurant, they will catch a glimpse of chefs hand-making pasta in the lab before entering the main dining room.

The Space
Designed by the award-winning interior architecture practice David Collins Studio, Tre Dita and Bar Tre Dita encompass 8,600 square feet across two levels. Clad in sienna, terracotta, maroon, white and gray Tuscan marbles, the arrival lobby and gastronomic tunnel welcome guests, setting the tone of the space. The restaurant features architectural columns, arched portals, dark-stained timber chequerboard flooring, walnut timber paneling, and wrought-iron light fixtures. These elements imbue the double-height, 3,200-square-foot main dining room, which seats 130 guests, with a modern Tuscan aesthetic. Banquettes upholstered in forest green and deep blue leather and floating four-top tables enhance the Tuscan vibes. Above the restaurant, a private dining room on the mezzanine seats 40 guests and overlooks the restaurant below, and opposite, 40-foot-tall navy blue sun-bleached linen curtains and floor-to-ceiling windows frame city views. The restaurant offers 2,500 square feet of flexible private and semi-private dining space across five rooms and two floors, accommodating 6 – 65 guests.

Bar Tre Dita Adjacent to Tre Dita is Bar Tre Dita, which serves as one of two bars in The St. Regis Chicago. With a focus on Italian spirits and whiskies from around the world, Bar Tre Dita serves St. Regis signature cocktails, Italian wines and specialty cocktails crafted by Bar and Spirits Director Diane Corcoran. The bar offers a variety of seating options for 120 guests, including 14 seats at the bar, lounge seating and more.

Bar Tre Dita’s walnut-timber paneled walls and cream and maroon chequerboard marble, and honey tobacco carpet floors complement the velvet banquette seating in navy blue, deep red and ochre gold, along with basket-weave textured leather bar stools in tobacco. The 96-foot-long hand-painted mural by American artist Dean Barger, draped above the bar, depicts an abstract interpretation of Chicago’s skyline, river, and iconic architecture. The bar, crafted from polished walnut and white, pink and green Cipollino marble, features a bronze, mirrored back bar showcasing Bar Tre Dita’s robust selection of more than 400 spirits from around the world.

About Chef Evan Funke
Chef Evan Funke is a two-time James Beard-nominated chef who brings two decades of experience to the Windy City, along with international acclaim from the success of his restaurants in Los Angeles – Felix Trattoria on Abbot Kinney in Venice, Mother Wolf in Hollywood and Las Vegas, and eponymous Funke in Beverly Hills. Felix, which opened in 2017, features a menu focused on the time-honored techniques of making pasta fatta a mano organized by various regions of Italy; at the Mother Wolf, Funke pays homage to the Eternal City of Rome and La Cucina Romana – a concept that has just expanded to Fontainebleau Las Vegas; while eponymous Funke is a culmination of all of chef’s culinary experiences as a three-story love letter to Italy. Funke, a culinary storyteller, is a custodian of Italian tradition and a master of the old-world techniques and culture of handmade pasta. His critically acclaimed cookbook, American Sfoglino, was published and released in fall of 2019. The book won the 2020 IACP Award for Best Cookbook, Chefs and Restaurants and received a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Photography in 2020. Since 2022, Funke has served as the official chef of the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. On the small screen, Tastemade produced a feature-length documentary film titled ‘Funke,’ which recounts his journey as a chef through to the opening of his restaurant Felix in Los Angeles. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2018 and is now streaming on Tastemade, as well as Amazon Prime and Hulu. In the spring of 2020, the eight-part docuseries, ‘Shape of Pasta,’ produced by Ugly Brother Studio, features Funke’s journeys throughout Italy as he works to preserve the rare and obscure traditional pasta shapes of Italy. ‘Shape of Pasta’ is currently available to stream on Roku.

About Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants
Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants is an independent, family-owned restaurant group based in Chicago that owns, manages and licenses more than 120 restaurants in Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, Texas, Virginia, Florida, and Washington D.C., with Tennessee coming soon. We were founded in June 1971 by Richard Melman and Jerry A. Orzoff with the opening of R.J. Grunts and today, thanks to the creativity of our partners, we proudly serve guests at more than 50 concepts ranging from fast casual to fine dining restaurants.

www.lettuce.com