A new all-day café, lounge and restaurant at Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie opened in early December.
Cupitol, pronounced cup-it-all, opened its first location in Evanston in 2016, according to co-owner Sellia Georges. She later opened two locations in Chicago, and the Skokie location is the first to have all-day service with heavier entrees in the evening hours, she said. Sellia Georges co-owns the Cupitol brand with her brother, Alex Georges.
Like the other Cupitols in the Chicago area, the Old Orchard location offers a wide breakfast menu, including 21 pastries and “the best omelet in Chicago,” according to Alex Georges. The pastries, a variety of croissants, scones, muffins, cookies and Danishes, are delivered daily from Cupitol’s 4,000-square-foot location/bakery in the West Loop, he said.
When other Cupitol locations close at 4 p.m., the menu at the Old Orchard location switches to cocktails, mocktails, and dinner options, including steak frites and old fashioneds, Sellia Georges said. The dining room has seating for up to 120 guests and 44 tables, Alex Georges said.
Chris Georges, the siblings’ father, owns Elly’s Brunch and Cafe, formerly Elly’s Pancake House, in Mundelein. Sellia Georges said she viewed Cupitol as the continuation of the family business.
Sellia Georges deconstructed Cupitol’s logo to show a covered dish over a coffee cup. “Food and coffee in one place, so it’s like the capitol,” she said. “It’s like a little government building with food and coffee all together.”
Cupitol is also taking measures to be accessible to as many people as possible, Sellia said, making accommodations for vegan, vegetarian, lactose- and dairy-free guests.
With a major $100 million redevelopment coming to the mall that will include multiple apartment buildings with hundreds of apartments, the Georges said Cupitol’s timing and opening was influenced by Westfield, the mall’s owner. The two also saw value in having the restaurant open now, before the renovations.
“Old Orchard is a great meeting point,” Sellia Georges said. “I think it’s a totally different dynamic with the shopping, but I think we’re getting a lot of people from the neighborhood, and that is our main goal,” she said.
Being located in the mall also pushed them to curate a dinner menu, Alex Georges said, because it’s the only Cupitol to be open past 4 p.m. “We need to stay open later, figure out a way for it to work. The all day café concept can only work so far into the evening,” he said.
After hundreds of apartments are built on the other side of the mall, near the former Bloomingdale’s location and a parking garage, as plans call for, Alex Georges said Cupitol would remain at its current location, allowing for residents to come find them before and after the mall closes.
Cupitol, located between Maggiano’s and Bloomie’s facing Skokie Boulevard in Skokie, will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday.