Goosefoot plans October 10 grand opening at new Lincoln Square home

Chris and Nina Nugent will hold a grand opening on Saturday, October 10, 2026, for Goosefoot, their contemporary French-American fine-dining restaurant, at 4520 N. Lincoln Ave. in Lincoln Square. The couple has been serving dinner in the new space since March, Block Club Chicago reported on September 30.

The October party caps a move that took about two years. The Nugents shut the original Goosefoot at 2656 W. Lawrence Ave. in 2024 after 12 years there. At the Lincoln Avenue location, a wine and craft beer list replaces the old BYOB policy. There is also an outdoor patio, and the owners now live in the apartment upstairs.

These are the main facts diners need ahead of the October 10 event.

• The grand opening is set for Saturday, October 10, 2026, Nina Nugent told Block Club.
• The restaurant is at 4520 N. Lincoln Ave., near West Sunnyside Avenue and just north of Welles Park.
• The seasonal chef’s tasting menu costs $225 per person, and a wine pairing adds $140.
• A four-course tasting menu called loosefoot costs $135 per person.
• The Lawrence Avenue restaurant was BYOB, while the new dining room pours wine and craft beer.
• Chris and Nina Nugent own the building and live above the restaurant.

A quiet reopening in March, a party in October

Goosefoot started serving at the new address in March without much announcement. The Nugents skipped the fanfare on purpose, Nina Nugent told Block Club; they wanted time to work out service and get comfortable in the building before drawing a crowd. On a recent Friday she greeted arriving diners with a joke about the living arrangement: “You are in our home because we live upstairs,” she said, Block Club reported.

As of September 30, the restaurant’s website listed only regular dinner service and no schedule or program for the October 10 event. Goosefoot keeps an email list for special events at the restaurant. Nina Nugent also told Block Club the couple plans to add Sunday hours, though no start date has been announced.

Why the Nugents chose Lincoln Avenue

The Nugents have called Lincoln Square home for a quarter century. After leaving Lawrence Avenue, their search centered on a commercial building with living space on the second floor. Nina Nugent told Block Club they even weighed moving to another neighborhood or out of Illinois, but Lincoln Square won out. Chris Nugent said he found the building late one night while scrolling through commercial real estate listings, and that the two of them had long wanted to be on Lincoln Avenue.

After buying the building in the winter of 2024, the Nugents redid the interior and reused as much from the Lawrence Avenue dining room as they could, Chris Nugent said. The storefront was previously home to DueLire Vino & Cucina, an Italian restaurant that closed in 2024, Block Club reported in March. The neighbor at 4518 N. Lincoln Ave. is Bistro Campagne, a French bistro that has been in Lincoln Square since 2002, according to the bistro’s website.

City records show the licenses were in place well before the March reopening. The City of Chicago issued Goosefoot a retail food license for 4520 N. Lincoln Ave. in April 2025, then on November 4, 2025, issued a liquor license for consumption on the premises and a separate outdoor patio license, according to the city’s business license data. The licenses are held by CMN Group LLC, the same company that held the Lawrence Avenue restaurant’s license.

Two tasting menus and a new wine list

The main draw is the goosefoot “surprise” chef’s tasting menu, served Thursday through Saturday for $225 per person, with a $140 wine pairing. On Wednesdays the kitchen serves the loosefoot menu, four courses for $135, with an $80 pairing. The restaurant’s website says a 22% service charge and tax are added to those prices, and the menu changes every season.

The current chef’s menu includes a foie gras and truffle mousse with a lingonberry gastrique, duck breast with kabocha squash and Burgundy truffle, Angus beef with a parsnip aigre-doux and brown butter sauce, and chocolates made in the Goosefoot kitchen, according to Block Club. At the new place, Chris Nugent told Block Club, he wants to keep sharpening the cooking and grow the wine list. With the restaurant closed, the couple finally took trips other than their regular visits to Nina’s family in Brazil, eating in Ireland, Spain, France, Denmark and Portugal, and Chris said they returned to Chicago with plenty of new ideas.

The restaurant’s site says the wine list draws from around the world, with bottles and glasses available. Diners with dietary limits should check before booking. The kitchen can handle no-shellfish and pescatarian requests and mild nut allergies, but the tasting menus cannot be adapted for vegetarian, vegan, low-dairy, dairy-free, severe nut allergy or gluten-free diets. Gluten-free diners can eat around the items that contain gluten, the site says.

Twelve years on Lawrence Avenue

The first Goosefoot opened on December 11, 2011, the birthday of Chris’s brother, who died unexpectedly in 2009. Nina Nugent told Block Club that his death is what convinced the couple to stop waiting and open Goosefoot. The 30-seat BYOB dining room caught on quickly, and she said she fielded hundreds of reservation calls a day early on. In April 2012, Chicago magazine picked Goosefoot as Chicago’s top new restaurant, Chicagoist reported, and the Chicago Tribune named Chris Nugent chef of the year the following January, according to Chicagoist.

Michelin awarded the restaurant a star a little more than a year after opening, according to a 2020 Michelin Guide profile, and Goosefoot was still on Chicago’s one-star list in the 2023 guide, NBC Chicago’s list shows. In 2018, Chicago magazine ranked the restaurant No. 8 among the city’s best restaurants, Block Club noted in 2020.

The Nugents ran a shop next door, too. Goosefoot Food & Wine opened at 2654 W. Lawrence Ave. in 2014 selling hand-painted chocolates, pantry goods and wine, DNAinfo reported, and began scooping ice cream there in 2017, according to DNAinfo. During the pandemic, the shop became the base for a family-style comfort food takeout menu. The one-story building that housed the shop now sits vacant and is the site of a proposed five-story, 37-unit apartment building, Block Club reported in July.

In early 2024, the owners announced in a social media post that they were leaving Lawrence Avenue, writing that “we want to be closer to family,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The chef behind the menu

Chris Nugent grew up in upstate New York and started cooking young. After his mother died when he was 11, he moved in with family friend John Daly, a chef who cooked French fine dining in Vestal, New York. The teenager helped out in Daly’s kitchen and tinkered with chocolate on the side, then studied at the culinary arts college of Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, where Daly had also trained, according to Block Club and the chef’s biography on the Goosefoot website.

He met Nina while she was working as an accountant at a Magnificent Mile hotel and he was the new executive sous chef at the restaurant inside. From the time they met, Nina Nugent told Block Club, Chris talked about running a restaurant of his own. Before Goosefoot, he ran the kitchen at Les Nomades, the Streeterville French restaurant that closed in 2025 after 32 years; Time Out Chicago listed Nugent among that restaurant’s past chefs.

Planning a visit

Reservations are required. The details below come from the restaurant’s website and reservation listing, plus CTA route information.

• Goosefoot serves dinner only, Wednesday through Saturday, and is closed Sunday through Tuesday.
• Wednesday seatings for the loosefoot menu are at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., and Thursday through Saturday seatings for the chef’s menu are at 5:30 and 8:30 p.m.
• Reservations are taken by phone at (773) 754-0368 or online through the restaurant’s website.
• Cancellations need two days’ notice to avoid a fee of $50 per person for the chef’s menu or $20 per person for loosefoot.
• The walk from the Western Brown Line stop is about two and a half blocks south on Lincoln Avenue, and the #49 Western bus, which runs around the clock, and the #78 Montrose bus, which runs until about 10 p.m., both pass within a couple of blocks.
• Parking is limited behind the restaurant, with street parking on nearby blocks, and the dress code is business casual.

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