Community Tavern in Portage Park More Than Lives Up To Its Name
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Ten years in and Community Tavern is still a dinner-only affair. The Portage Park New American spot, located on Milwaukee Avenue near Six Corners, refuses to give in to distractions like weekend brunch. Dinnertime has proven to be the sweet spot. Not only for the restaurant, but its neighborhood, too.
In the early days of Community Tavern, its married owners, Brenna and Joey Beato, lived right above the restaurant with their young son. Deep ties to Portage Park as both business owners and residents, paired with the couple’s extensive background in hospitality, helped fortify the vision for their restaurant. “The idea of community was very important to us because that’s how we thought of restaurants,” says Brenna. Creating a gathering space that fosters mutual respect has been a priority from the get-go. These days, most people simply refer to the restaurant as “Community,” which is emblazoned in cerulean on its marquee and is shorthand for what the Beatos hoped to evoke.
The two hospitality veterans, who met while working at Quince in Evanston, are both professionally-trained chefs with impressive backgrounds at restaurants like Momofuku’s Má Pêche in New York City (Joey) and Moto Restaurant in Chicago (Brenna). Something gained from their rich history in the restaurant industry is a hard-earned perspective. “We wanted to be really inclusive,” Brenna says.
Their journey comes through beyond just operations — it’s also apparent on Community’s menu, where dishes like green papaya salad, dumplings filled with mushroom butter or short ribs, and crispy rice noodles with a chicken and lemongrass ragu are crowd favorites.
The food is met with a dynamite bar program featuring a rotation of cocktails, from modern classics to seasonal riffs like the snap pea G&T made with a syrup of homegrown snap peas. And their lineup of interesting wines from unsung terroirs like Mexico and the Baltics guarantee diners exciting new pairings. All of which make it easy to understand how Community has maintained its foothold in Portage Park over the years.
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The Menu Reads Pan-Asian Meets Midwestern
Joey runs the kitchen alongside his good friend and longtime sous chef, Danny Tolentino. While Community’s menu leans heavily pan-Asian, there are definite whiffs of Midwestern supper club. Recent additions include the fjord trout which is cured for up to three days before it’s sliced thinly and served with a baguette slathered in herb butter, with Chinese mustard and preserved corn prepared tsukemono-style on the side. “It’s essentially like a Japanese pickled vegetable,” says Joey. “We add some fennel, ginger, garlic, and shallots and then the liquid is a lime syrup with rice wine vinegar and lime zest.” Produce-forward moments like these can be found throughout the menu and sometimes in unexpected ways.
Housemade sweet potato noodles help turn the chicken noodle consommé, Community’s version of Asian chicken noodle soup, into something special. It’s amped up with Thai flavors, plus a chicken roulade, then topped with a green salad and cured squash. Preserved corn and spicy miso temper a homey cream cheese version of the classic ricotta gnudi after it’s been handcut and boiled before getting seared crisp to order.
Hospitality in Practice
Community’s main menu also includes a kids menu. For the Beatos, creating a culture of inclusiveness isn’t a practice meant solely for adults. On any given night, often starting when its doors open at 5 p.m., young families from Portage Park and its surrounding neighborhoods are present in the dining room — where they are warmly welcomed. The decision to embrace children at their upscale restaurant was important for the Beatos, who are well-versed in the dance of dining with youngsters.
“If you have an adventurous kid that is going to share your meal and eat anything, that’s amazing,” Brenna says. “But for the other large percentage of people that don’t, or their kid wants to order their own thing and you don’t want to spend a ton of money on a giant portion of something, we wanted to have options. I mean, that’s kind of the core of hospitality.”
A compact menu with reliable kiddie go-tos is offered gratis with an entree purchase (Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday), and it includes a couple of favorites from the Beatos’s 8-year-old son, Clarence. “He ate the exact same thing every time he’d come to the restaurant for three years: a grilled cheese and French fries with apples on the side and a lemonade,” Brenna says. “Then, about two years ago, he ventured out to the cheeseburger, and so now that’s his order.”
A Close-Knit Community
Behind the scenes, Brenna takes care of a lot of the office and managerial work. Her role at Community began to shift away from front-of-the-house as Clarence reached school age. Now, general manager, Karen Smaka, a good friend of the couple, handles the day-to-day operations. As Brenna explains: it’s not easy for both parents to run a restaurant and also parent a child. A village is required — in both endeavors.
In fact, most of the group has worked together for several years, making the team a tight-night one. That is an undercurrent which circulates throughout. “That translates when you come into the space. You can tell that our people are enjoying being around each other, and they’re enjoying interacting with guests. It’s a genuine thing and you can’t fake that. It’s either there and you feel it or it’s not,” she says.
Clarence clearly feels it. When recently prompted by a school friend tasked with picking the restaurant for dinner that night, Clarence proudly recommended his family’s restaurant. The kid and his family showed up.
