The end of Grace, a sleek, modern Chicago restaurant with three Michelin stars and a reputation as one of the nation’s best, was quick and messy: The chef, Curtis Duffy, and the general manager, Michael Muser, abruptly stopped working there in December 2017 after a dispute with their business partner. Two days later, Grace unceremoniously closed its doors.
The aftermath, though, has been more deliberative. As Mr. Duffy and Mr. Muser sparred with their former partner in several legal disputes and waited for their noncompete agreements to expire, they planned their next restaurant. It would have the best china, they said, the best furniture ever. They’d use ingredients that were fresher, more seasonal than they ever had before. They’d make a meal more elaborate than anyone had ever seen.
Ever: That word just kept coming up. So, they decided, that would be the name.
“It’s this little word, this little four-letter thing that we pack into the most epic experiences of our lives,” Mr. Muser said in a phone interview. “This experience, that we’re going to put in front of everybody, this is our Ever.”
Ever, scheduled to open next spring, will be in Fulton Market, a former meatpacking district that now houses culinary and cultural attractions. The restaurant, in a 6,000-square-foot ground-floor space, is being designed by Lawton Stanley Architects, the firm that also designed and built Grace. Ever will seat about 75 people in the main space, with a private dining room for another 12.
The $300 to $500 tasting menus of 12 to 15 dishes are similar in cost and structure to Grace’s. One menu will focus on seafood and grains, and the other more on vegetables. As at Grace, the food will not center on any one cuisine.
Mr. Duffy, 43, is already known for best-evers. He grew up in central Ohio and came up through some of Chicago’s premier restaurants. After working at Charlie Trotter’s, he moved to Alinea, the only Chicago restaurant that currently has three Michelin stars.
Mr. Duffy and Mr. Muser won two stars at their first joint venture, Avenues, in 2011. At Grace, food was arranged into edible sculptures on elaborate plates. The cuisine was experimental: The team tried repeatedly to fill a bubble, a dome-like hood made of citrus stock, white wine and several rare fruits, with flavored smoke, but stopped after the bubbles kept popping on their way to the table.
“A lot of it has to do with walking that fine line with giving the guests something that’s familiar to them but also taking that familiar away from them,” Mr. Duffy said. “They have to be able to connect with it. Otherwise, you lose them.”
Since leaving Grace, Mr. Duffy and Mr. Muser have been embroiled in a squall of legal disputes. They have dropped a claim against their former partner, Michael Olszewski, a Chicago real estate broker who invested more than $2.5 million in Grace, over a noncompete clause in their contracts. Another case, currently in appeal, concerns Mr. Muser’s unemployment benefits.
Mr. Olszewski also says that Mr. Duffy and Mr. Muser had unexplained absences and that expensive ingredients went missing. According to court documents, a lawsuit making those claims was filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County in August 2018. But a manager of the court’s Law Division said last week that the suit had been removed from the electronic docket system at the request of the law firm representing Mr. Olszewski. Sean O’Callaghan, Mr. Muser and Mr. Duffy’s lawyer, said neither he nor his clients had been served with the lawsuit.
Mr. Olszewski’s lawyer, Victor Pioli, said he did not request the suit be removed. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s active. We intend to pursue it,” he said.
In a phone interview. Mr. Olszewski said he wished “Mike and Curtis good luck on all their future endeavors. Chicago is one of the food capitals in the country, and, in my opinion, Grace was the best restaurant in Chicago.”
Like Grace, Ever is meant to be an expensive, expansive experience that starts as soon as guests walk through the door.
From a foyer (which Mr. Muser, 45, described as “a decompression chamber”) guests will proceed down a hallway so narrow that it almost demands they walk single-file. At the host area, little snacks will be mounted on a wall, ready to be plucked by diners waiting to be seated. Small citrus-flavored clouds made from cotton candy and dried yuzu rind will hang from the ceiling for diners to reach up and taste.
In the main room, Mr. Duffy and Mr. Muser plan to install acoustic paneling on the ceiling to reduce noise from other tables.
Cooking has always offered Mr. Duffy solace, an escape from a difficult childhood. When he was young, his father fatally shot his mother, and then himself. Mr. Duffy’s personal life, and rise as a cook, are the subject of the 2015 documentary film “For Grace.”
“The kitchen has always been my home,” he said in a phone interview. “Since my parents had passed away, it became even more of a home to me.”
Leaving Grace was also difficult. “We put everything into that restaurant and, it’s hard to let it go. But it was the right thing. It was the right choice.”
He still has the word Grace tattooed on his arm. Sometimes, he said, people ask if he intends to cover it with a new tattoo.
“I’m telling my life story, and I just closed the chapter for Grace,” he said. “Is it bitter? Maybe. Parts of it. Is it happy? Absolutely. Now we’re writing the next chapter of the story.”
Jack Begg contributed research.
