Monteverde's rising star chef is heading to Bucktown. Bailey Sullivan, who has run the day-to-day kitchen operations at the acclaimed West Loop Italian restaurant, will head the kitchen at Trattoria Lo So, a new project from Monteverde chef and partner Sarah Grueneberg set to open in the neighborhood in winter 2027.
A New Chapter for Monteverde's Team
The plans were detailed by John Kessler, a freelance dining critic for Chicago Magazine, in an article originally reported by the Chicago Tribune. Trattoria Lo So is described as an upcoming restaurant from the Monteverde team, joining partners Grueneberg, Jaime Canete and Rob Mosher. Grueneberg will serve as creative director on the project, while Sullivan takes charge of the kitchen itself.
Sullivan's path to this moment has been building for years. According to the Chicago Tribune's reporting, she was a finalist on Top Chef, and per WTTW, she competed on Season 22 of Bravo's Top Chef in 2025, advancing through the competition, which was set in Canada, all the way to the season finale. That national exposure came after Monteverde promoted her from Chef di Cucina to Executive Chef in March 2025, as the restaurant approached its 10th anniversary, a move detailed by Chicago Gourmet. She was later named a 2026 James Beard Emerging Chef nominee.
From La Grange Line Cook to Executive Chef
Sullivan grew up in La Grange, Illinois, where her father has operated the burger restaurant Goldyburgers for more than 40 years, per Chicago Gourmet's profile. She earned a culinary degree from Kendall College and interned at the two-Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant Acadia before joining Monteverde's kitchen. She started there in 2016 as a line cook and steadily worked her way up to the top job, according to Chicago Gourmet.
She now brings that trajectory to a shared television pedigree with her mentor. Grueneberg gained her own national fame in 2011 as the runner-up on Season 9 of Top Chef, later competing on Food Network's Iron Chef Gauntlet and hosting WTTW's Dishalicious in 2018, according to background provided by Monteverde. Before opening Monteverde in November 2015, Grueneberg earned three consecutive Michelin stars as executive chef at Spiaggia and won the 2017 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Great Lakes.
Central Italian Cooking Without the Fresh Pasta
Trattoria Lo So will feature cooking from central Italy, spanning Abruzzo, Umbria, Lazio and Le Marche, according to the Chicago Tribune. Wood-oven-fired casseroles and charcoal-grilled fish and meat are planned for the menu, alongside a kitchen equipped with live fuel, though the restaurant will not serve pizza. Grueneberg is reportedly considering pastas al forno, including a freeform lasagne, while grilled meat skewers and soft-serve ice cream sundaes are being considered for the appetizer and dessert menus respectively.
Pasta will still be the headliner, but the approach marks a sharp departure from Monteverde's in-house pastificio. Trattoria Lo So will use dried pasta instead of fresh, sourcing exclusively from Mancini Pastificio Agricolo, an Italian manufacturer that grows all of its own durum wheat. Founded in 2010 by agronomist Massimo Mancini on a family farm established in 1938 in Monte San Pietrangeli, Italy, the company produces pasta using 100 percent estate-grown durum wheat, extruded through bronze dies and slow-dried at low temperatures, according to TasteAtlas.
Building Over a Bucktown Sports Bar's Old Patio
The restaurant will occupy the former Jack & Ginger's space at 2048 West Armitage Avenue, a Bucktown address that housed the popular neighborhood sports bar for 13 years, complete with an outdoor courtyard and terrace, according to Time Out. The Monteverde team's construction project involves a full gut renovation of that site, and the group has built a second building over the former patio, connecting the two structures with a front vestibule beneath a skylight.
Designer Karen Herold, who also designed Monteverde's interior and open pastificio stage, is behind the new space. The founder of Chicago-based Studio K has designed prominent local venues including Girl & the Goat, Maple & Ash and the Nobu Hotel Chicago, according to a profile from Fooditor. For Trattoria Lo So, Herold is aiming for a cozy feel with plenty of little nooks, wood paneling, tile floors and bentwood bistro chairs, and the restaurant is expected to have quieter acoustics and a few more seats than Monteverde, along with slightly lower prices.
What Lo So Means
The name Lo So translates from Italian as “the one I know,” fitting for a project built around familiar faces from Monteverde's West Loop kitchen taking on a new neighborhood identity in Bucktown. Monteverde itself has built a formidable reputation in recent years, ranked the number one restaurant on Chicago Magazine's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2024 and a past winner of Jean Banchet Restaurant of the Year honors, according to a report from Resy. Grueneberg has also extended her reach beyond the restaurant, publishing the vegetable-focused cookbook Listen to Your Vegetables in 2022, which became an IACP Cookbook Awards finalist the following year.
With Sullivan now leading the kitchen and Grueneberg guiding the concept as creative director, Trattoria Lo So aims to bring the same critical pedigree that built Monteverde's reputation into a more casual, neighborhood-scaled setting when it opens in Bucktown in winter 2027.
