A Duo of Culinary Wonderlands in the Middle of Evanston

If you’re going to go to the suburbs for dinner, then there had better be a damn good reason.

Yes, visiting your mom is one of them.

But so is eating fancy éclairs and drinking beer cocktails in a historic bank-turned-restaurant-slash-café. Enter Evanston’s latest delicious duo, Kinship (that’s the restaurant side) and Next of Kin (that’s the market and café side). They’re open now, so take a look around.

Start at Next of Kin, an all-day café that’s trying to make street waffles the new donut. It’s also got a massive salad bar filled with a bunch of fresh produce, so that’s nice. Pay it a visit before cozying up in the corner table below the golden flower mural. Just you and your charcoal latte.

Then, move on over to Kinship, where floor-to-ceiling windows cover the walls of this circular restaurant and bar. It’s a stunner and, somewhere between the marble tables surrounded by purple booths and bronze light fixtures, you may even forget that you’re there to eat things. Let the citrus gremolata-covered steak with onion rings serve as a friendly reminder.

It goes nicely with the hasselback sweet potatoes and Midnight Oil cocktail, the latter being a heady brew made with rye, Campari, orange blossom water and nitro milk stout. To say nothing of the birthday cake éclair.

You had a nice run, once-a-year birthdays.