In Chicago, an 1883 Townhouse Now Holds a Room for Dry-Aged Beef's Keepers

Asador Bastian is a Chicago steakhouse, and it sits inside a townhouse built in 1883 that has been brought back to working order. Within those walls is a room set aside for butchery, where the meat is broken down under the same roof where it will be served. Doug Psaltis, who both cooks and runs restaurants, leads the project with his partner Hsing Chen, who trained in the kitchen of the French Laundry. The two are bringing fresh energy to a city whose tradition of great steakhouses runs deep. For a publication that follows the American house, the building is the part worth noticing: a nineteenth-century home restored to take on a new use, rather than a new room made to look old. Here the dining room lives in the house, and the house was not replaced to make room for it.

With reporting from Surface.