There are some 38 uninhabited islands in Norway,* and three in Humboldt Park. Of course, there are the two in the Lagoon, but these days Ørkenoy—the two-year-oldNordic-inspired brewery, cocktail bar, and restaurant—is “deserted” in name only. (The word is a rough mash-up of two Norwegian words: ørken, for desert, and oy, for island.)
But at its seemingly ill-timed opening, at the height of the pandemic, the threat that the seats in its bright, open confines—hard by the elevated Bloomingdale Trail greenway—would remain empty was very real to chef-partner Ryan Sanders. The name, he says, “was in relation to the fact that we are in a space still off the beaten path, the idea of the 606 as a current that would bring things to us. It was the question, ‘If you got to bring one thing to a desert island, what would it be?’ Our answer was beer.”
Sanders and his former partner, brewerJonny Ifergan, spent a year and a half building out the space in the Kimball Arts Center, planning to offer an alternative to the hoppy, IPA-dominant brewery scene: Scandinavian-inspired lagers and farmhouse ales to accompany Sanders’s nimble menu built around open-faced smørrebrød on dense sourdough rye rugbrød.
“When the pandemic happened, floors were torn out, plumbing was going in,” says Sanders, who’d previously cooked in the taproom at Lagunitas Brewing. “There was no slowing down at that point. We couldn’t stop if we wanted to. The bank wants its money. The landlord wants his rent.”
They’d opened in September 2020 with all the precautions and safety measures they could establish: reservations only, QR code menus, and rigorously minimal contact between staff and guests. “It was, from a service perspective, awful.” Six weeks later, the city shut everything down again, and Sanders and Ifergan had to lay off their entire staff, apart from brewer Briana Hestad.
Still, the space came to life as conditions relaxed. The following June they introduced biannual block parties and pop-up markets for independent, itinerant craft and food businesses, which was always part of the plan. “The very first one, of course, there was, like, a hurricane that day,” says Sanders. “We thought the building was going to flood, but this place was packed to the gills. There were still masks and we were still asking for vax cards and all that stuff, but people just wanted to be out. They just wanted something to do.”
The vibe is much less restrictive these days, though guests still order from their phones, and when Ifergan stepped away at theendof last year to start his own brewery, Hestad stepped up. Both the beer and Sanders’s menu began to evolve, and he’s just introduced a bunch of new fall dishes, highlighted by larger shareable plates and dishes that range far beyond northern European flavors.
Right now he’s braising pork ribs for 36 hours with Mick Klug plums, and shellacking them on the pickup with mezcal barbecue sauce. There’s a dino-sized lamb shank, barely clinging to the bone, drenched in an orange wine-spiked reduction of its braising liquid, its richness offset by a crunchy herb salad.
Credit: Ryan Sanders
These augment the portable smørrebrød and small bites core, which now features a dollop of chicken liver mousse atop a tiny apple cider donut with a drizzle of lingonberry glaze, which can serve as a kind of gateway organ for the offal adverse. He’s brought back brussels sprouts, this season seared in brown butter and glazed in cider-gochujang sauce, which ought not deter anyone weary of this menu standard. And some of the open-faced sandwiches have gone pretty far afield from the more traditional mainstays, like the Seitalian Stallion, a vegan riff on Italian beef—a “sacrilege,” jokes Sanders, with mushroom seitan drenched in a caramelized onion bechamel.
The bar is now fully open, serving luminous, fruit-forward cocktails, in addition to the drafts, which Hestad, who has a PhD in Scandinavian language, culture, and history, has scaled back from some of the more challenging smoked beers (though a very approachable one remains), in favor of lighter, refreshing, herbal-kissed brews like a farmhouse ale with lemon verbena and shiso, and a gooseberry wheat with lemon balm and sage.
Ørkenoy1757 N Kimball312-929-4024orkenoy.com
Ørkenoy continues to evolve into an ever more multifaceted concept, hosting Wednesday oyster nights, art exhibits, and dance parties, and selling a carefully curated selection of packaged goods out of its retail market. Friday, October 28, it’s staging an interactive beer blending dinner with Primary Colors, whose customizable brews are also produced on-site, and its next midwinter market featuring some two dozen-plus independent vendors is set for December 3.
In some ways the long, slow, organic easing out of isolation was good for the brewery. “It’s been an interesting few years for everyone,” says Sanders. “I like the box because then you can bounce off the walls and find something to create with what you have. We don’t have a wealth of resources, but the silver lining was everybody brought something to the desert island and we got to create with what we have.”
*so says Wikipedia
