Brûlée Takes Brunch to New Heights in the South Loop

Brunch here is an art (and a family affair)

A compelling brunch menu finds the right mix of sweet, savory, traditional, and the unexpected. At Brûlée, brunch standards like a veggie omelet, an açaí bowl, a stack of pancakes, and a staple brunch burger (beef and plant-based) all have their place, but Roberts has a few riffs of her own.  

Alongside fried chicken and waffles is Roberts’ reimagined version — a salted-caramel and sweet potato Belgian waffle crowned with Cajun-fried lobster tails. “It’s sweet and savory, but a little salty — the perfect combination,” she says.

And it’s Brûlée’s second best-seller, coming behind the smoked brisket grilled cheese. The popular sandwich involves toasted challah layered with smoked gouda and hefty cuts of smoked brisket that have been braised in a housemade barbecue sauce. “We take the braising liquid and reduce it, then we add our homemade barbecue sauce into the braising liquid. Then that goes on the grill and we baste the brisket,” says Roberts. A comfort food flag arises when the grilled cheese comes with a cup of tomato bisque, making for a nostalgic duo. 

For the creation of this dish, Roberts credits her longtime mentee, friend, and chef de cuisine, Kennedy Bufford. Bufford, along with Roberts’s mom, Shronda Dunn, who is a co-owner and Brûlée’s general manager, are just a couple of the members from Roberts’ family — biological and chosen — who help with day-to-day operations. 

The menu is deeply personal 

Brûlée has a decidedly soul food bent with dishes that pull not only from Roberts’ Black American heritage, but also the near-decade she spent in Atlanta working with her mentor, chef Virgil Harper. 

Roberts started working with Harper as an intern then took on different roles at his various restaurants. Her time in Georgia helped solidify her understanding of Black foodways and expanded her thoughts on what makes brunch brunch. “When I moved to Atlanta, that’s when I really leaned into breakfast and brunch,” she says. “I was like, wait, that’s a thing? — gumbo, oxtails, and chicken and waffles [for brunch]? They weren’t really doing that up North. My mentor really introduced me to all of those things.”

She pays homage to him with Virgil’s Special — your choice of hot honey-drizzled fried chicken or catfish placed atop candied yams and a bed of spice-forward collard greens made with smoked turkey — a dish inspired by a similar one at Harper’s restaurants. “I had to do it for Virgil,” Roberts says. When Harper attended Brûlée’s soft opening, “​​He said, ‘I feel like a proud dad.’” 

The candied yams are a nod to her grandmother, who taught her how to make the traditional sweet potato dish with fresh sweet potatoes cooked down in sugar, vanilla extract, and butter, giving it its namesake “candied” glaze. 

Brûlée’s sepia-toned gumbo is a heavy pot of slow food at its best, made with crawfish, shrimp, chicken, and andouille sausage. It’s on the menu as an entree, but also as a side dish, which is nice if you like to order a range of things like a true brunch legend. Just be sure to also try the housemade biscuit ladled with honey butter — order a few for the table and eat them piping hot.

The space has lived many lives 

Brûlée’s staff buzzes across the dining room in all black, wearing branded t-shirts with cheeky one-liners: “Where breakfast gets bougie,” and “You had me at brûlée.” Roberts channels the richness of her favorite dessert, crème brûlée (forthcoming on the menu), in the vibey space.  It’s layered with sheer, floor-to-ceiling, cream-colored curtains draped along walls of windows, playing peekaboo between its sleek, monochromatic interior and the passerby vying to get a glimpse of it. 

The space corners South Michigan Avenue and 21st Street in a building that in the early 1900s housed the Studebaker showroom and was part of the connective tissue of Motor Row, a grand corridor of pioneering car dealerships spanning more than a mile. By mid-century though, a desolate Motor Row was made anew by notable musicians such as Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Jerry Butler, and Etta James, alongside recording studios including Chess Records and Vee-Jay Records (the largest Black-owned record label in the U.S. before Motown), making it an epicenter of music — blues, gospel, jazz and soul — known as Record Row. Fossils from such bygone eras are a backdrop for the neighborhood’s current iteration.

Today’s South Loop draws crowds with its massive venues:  Soldier Field stadium, the Museum Campus, Wintrust Arena, and McCormick Place convention center, which is part of the reason why Roberts chose this location and why Brûlée is open on Mondays and Tuesdays — days when restaurants are traditionally closed, but conventions are hopping. 

But Brûlée’s real bread and butter is residents living and working in its surrounding mid and high rises. Their coffee lounge serves Dark Matter and is meant to serve as a neighborhood third space. “We have our coffee lounge to the right, and then we have a whole bar area to the left,” says Roberts. The lounge is equipped with outlets for laptop warriors, and serves snacks like an avocado “croast” (avocado, shaved red onion, sun-dried tomato and Calabrian chile on a toasted croissant). 

At the large wrap-around bar, from 12:30 p.m. until 3 p.m., Brûlée offers one of the earliest happy hours in the city. The midday happy hour has its own food menu with items like a crispy fried chicken sandwich and truffle fries. 

It should be mentioned that Brûlée has a house espresso martini topped with banana foam and a brûléed banana slice that one regular told Roberts was so good, she dreamt about it and promptly returned for another the next day. One of Roberts’s current favorites is the hibiscus lavender martini with hibiscus tea and housemade lavender syrup, which gives it a natural pop of electric purple.

Even though she embraces her role as a restaurateur, Roberts still works as a private chef. But restaurant ownership has definitely grown on her. She’s brainstorming with her team on what a second Brûlée could look like. “It’s definitely being talked about — if we want it to be bigger, if we want it to be smaller, if we want to do more of a coffee shop,” she says. “I love being a private chef, and I also love being a restaurant owner.”

And Chicago’s brunch scene is better for it.