How to Get Into Southport Corridor Italian Favorite Coda di Volpe

What’s the crowd typically like at Coda di Volpe?

Kayla Morrison: Our bread and butter is being a good neighborhood restaurant. It’s a lot of the same people. It’s families. We have a really early push where it’s lots of kids and babies  before bedtime, having their spaghetti and meatballs while their parents enjoy a more  elevated dinner. It does become a little bit more refined by nighttime. The younger ones head home and go to bed, and we get a nice, lively dinner hour. It’s now become more of a destination spot. This part of the Southport Corridor has really boomed.

How many seats does Coda di Volpe have?

Indoors we have about 125. That includes the bar seats, which is coveted real estate. It’s a beautiful wraparound bar that has almost a 360° view. You’re still very much involved in the restaurant. 

There are even a couple of seats we call the pizza counter, that look at the pizza production kitchen. You get a show as you’re having your dinner. It really only takes about 90 seconds to cook them, so they are in and out and in and out. There are nights where there are hundreds of pizzas going in and out of that oven. It’s a well-oiled machine.

Outdoors, we push the envelope. Chicagoans are great at weathering the weather. We brought our patios back in mid-March. There’s 80 to 90 more seats out there. 

Can you reserve seats on the patio?

None of our patio is bookable on Resy, because it’s not covered. We become intimately involved with the Weather Channel. The minute we feel confident enough to take a risk, we will pull all of our reservations that have been booked on tables indoors and pull them outside, and have the Resy algorithm rebook the restaurant.

It’s absolutely bonkers. But on those patio days, we probably have way more availability than you can imagine, because now we have 80 to 90 additional seats we weren’t necessarily planning for.

When do reservations become available on Resy?

We have a 90-day booking window. We don’t have any specific, ‘Hey, we drop all the reservations for a month on the first of month at 9 a.m. and you better be logged in.’ We try to be more approachable than that. We don’t want it to be like you can’t get into the restaurant that’s down the street from you.

Do you have any tips for scoring a last-minute reservation?

I would call. If you live in the neighborhood, walk in, because I can almost guarantee we’re going to figure out a way to seat you. I’d be like, ‘I don’t have a table for an hour and a half but I’ve got one for an hour, does that work for you?’ We are constantly reworking our books and playing the game of Tetris.

How much space do you save for walk-ins?

It varies by day. There’s always someone early or someone late, there’s always way more wiggle room than what your book really says. We use a lot of data and analysis to guide our decision making. We leave about two tables a day in what we consider in-house only, which means they’re not available on Resy but we can see them internally. If a host is booking something in person or on the phone, those are still available.

What’s the best time to walk in?

In the 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. range. It’s usually a fairly soft part of our service and we start seeing the way the night is going to go. Our bars are not always full, so there’s usually some wiggle room there. It’s not the height of the dinner hour where we’re looking at our 6:30 to 7 o’clock push.

How long does the Notify list get? 

If I look at high-profile holidays or busier nights, high-volume Fridays or Saturdays, there are often upwards of 100 covers. 

Should people on the Notify list hold out any hope they’ll get in?

There’s definitely hope. We routinely comb through the Notify list almost in a competitive way, like ‘How many covers can we book tonight?’ Typically, we’re trying to do it multiple days in advance and we’re trying to catch you. Knowing that those Resy text messages go out at 4 o’clock the day before a reservation, we do see a good amount of cancellations at that time frame. It’s actually a good time to give us a call.

What is your busiest night, and many covers do you typically do then?

The busiest and most covers we have ever done is 603. That was one particular Friday a few years ago, and I remember the shift like it was yesterday. 

Our busiest night is honestly Friday, every single week. We get such a massive early push. I don’t know if it’s the work-from-home culture, that ‘Come 4:30, we’re at the bar’ mentality. But we typically have a line out the door at 4:15, when we open our doors. Whether it’s patio or not, Cubs game or not, our bar is full. In about 15 minutes, those 26 seats are already down. From there, it’s just a marathon.

With the patio, we’re talking 300 to 350 covers throughout the week and probably 450 to 500 on weekend nights.

It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday. What’s the vibe?

It’s a party for sure. There are people standing, waiting for bar seats or waiting for tables. Everyone’s got a drink in their hands. If it’s patio season, the patio is completely full, and there’s probably a group of people waiting outside for seats.

What’s the best seat in the house?

I do love the pizza counter, and the bar. The bar is probably where the most people want to sit. However, we do have a table that we call the King’s Table. It seats probably eight on the lower end, 12 on the high end. It’s not private by any means, but it’s a little more sequestered, and it’s right in front of the pizza counter. I love having a party there.

What are some dishes a first-time visitor can’t miss?

You should get a pizza. They’re small enough that it’s a great option to share between two people and get something else — I wouldn’t skip on the pasta. The fun part is, we don’t cut the pizza. It comes out whole and you have your own scissors to cut as big or as small of a slice as you would like.