Highwood's Restaurant Year, Next Door to Fort Sheridan: What Opened, What's Coming, and Where Avec Fits
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
"I wanted it to be a Tuesday restaurant as much as a Saturday restaurant." Chef Todd Stein said that to The Record North Shore about Juniper, the restaurant he opened in Highwood on August 25. Highwood had three notable openings in 2026, and each one was built for a different time of day. Pelago Cafe is a daytime counter that stays open into early evening. Juniper is meant for any weeknight. Avec arrives on Thursday, October 29, built for a long, shared dinner.
Starting October 29, Fort Sheridan will be a short trip from three new restaurants that open at three different hours.
The first of the three opened quietly. In April, cousins Ruthie Amidei and Mada Ugolini Hitchmough told The Record they were days away from opening Pelago Cafe at 325 Waukegan Ave., in what had been a nail salon. The cousins were born and raised in Highwood. Their fathers come from two villages ten minutes apart in Pelago, Italy, and their parents met in Highwood. The café is named for that home region and represents Emilia-Romagna on the menu.
By July it was serving. WGN-TV's Spotlight Chicago featured it on July 10. A Hoodline report the next day listed the menu as scratch-made pastas, panini, flatbreads, espresso and a small wine list, plus Italian imports to take home. Guests order at the counter and food is brought to the table. The cousins also planned private dinners and wine pairings.
Hours matter most here. As of that July report, Pelago's website listed Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. That makes it a lunch and late-afternoon stop that closes before most dinner reservations start. Those hours are a few months old, so check the café's own listing before you go, especially as the days get shorter.
Juniper fills the next block of time. It opened Tuesday, August 25, at 200 Green Bay Road. Stein first had the idea in 2021, and the restaurant took two years to develop. Stein grew up in Highland Park and has cooked since the early 1990s. He led kitchens at MK in River North, Formento's and The Bristol, but The Record noted that Juniper is the first restaurant he runs himself.
The menu covers two kinds of dinner. One side updates familiar American dishes: spinach artichoke dip, burgers, miso-glazed salmon. The other is a raw bar with classic and specialty sushi rolls, sashimi and nigiri, run by executive sushi chef Akira Yang. Some ingredients are local, and the fish comes from Tokyo. A juniper tree grows in the middle of the dining room. There is also a patio, which will matter more next spring than it does in October.
Stein told The Record he wanted Juniper to work for "the full experience or after another experience they had in the city." For anyone living on the old post, that means a dinner that doesn't need to be planned around a weekend.
The third opening is the one people have been waiting for. Avec opens Thursday, October 29, at 250 Waukegan Ave. According to The Record, it will be Avec's first location outside Chicago and its third overall. The City of Highwood announced the date on September 9 and welcomed Avec to what it called the city's growing dining scene. Online reservations opened October 1, so booking is already possible.
Avec opened in Chicago in 2003 and serves Mediterranean and Midwestern shared plates. It belongs to One Off Hospitality, the group behind Blackbird, The Violet Hour, Publican Quality Bread, Dove's Luncheonette and Big Star. Executive Chef Dylan Patel said signature dishes such as the chorizo-stuffed medjool dates will come north. He is keeping some new dishes as a surprise and described the goal as "the best dinner party you've been to."
Highwood got a first taste in September. Avec served a tabbouleh salad with roasted corn and tahini, plus shrimp cocktail with harissa cocktail sauce and fresh horseradish, at the kickoff of Highwood Design Week on September 15. The Highwood Chamber of Commerce hosted the four-day event with North Shore City Lifestyle under the theme "Design Is Everywhere."
The space is large for Waukegan Avenue. It covers nearly 5,000 square feet, with a 95-seat main dining room and a barroom that seats 48 at a booth, the bar counter and banquettes. A U-shaped bar with a marble back greets guests at the door.
Each of the three covers a part of the week the other two leave open.
| Address | Opened | Built for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pelago Cafe | 325 Waukegan Ave. | Serving by July 2026 | Late morning through early evening, Wednesday to Sunday, per hours reported in July |
| Juniper | 200 Green Bay Road | August 25, 2026 | American plates or a sushi and raw bar dinner, which Stein built for weeknights as much as weekends |
| Avec | 250 Waukegan Ave. | October 29, 2026 | Shared plates and wine for a longer dinner; reservations open since October 1 |
The three also come from three different kinds of owner. Pelago is run by two cousins from Highwood. Juniper is a Highland Park chef's first restaurant of his own. Avec is a Chicago group's first move outside the city. The Record's Pelago story included a detail that helps explain the timing: the cousins said Highwood has an active commercial real estate market, and the Waukegan storefront came open two weeks after they talked about the idea over wine in Bologna.
A few things haven't opened yet, and their timing is less certain than Avec's.
Fort Sheridan residents can pair any of these meals with the trails at home. The Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve is open daily from 6:30 a.m. to sunset, with its main entrance at 1275 Gilgare Lane. It has 3.65 miles of trails, including a 1.1-mile Hike Lake County route. That route counts toward the Lake County Forest Preserves' 2026 Hike Lake County challenge. Walk seven of the 12 designated trails by Monday, November 30, and send in your travel log by December 31 to earn a commemorative medallion.
The schedules overlap well. The preserve closes at sunset, which comes earlier each week this fall. Pelago's reported hours run into the early evening, so a late-afternoon walk followed by panini and an espresso fits in the same window. A Juniper or Avec reservation can come after the light is gone. Elsewhere in the county, the Forest Preserves' 40th and final Halloween Hikes take place October 23 and 24 at Ryerson Conservation Area in Riverwoods, with timed evening walks and advance registration.
The next date on Highwood's own calendar is the Elf Invasion Pub Crawl on Saturday, December 5, from 2 p.m. until bar close. Celebrate Highwood lists live music, food and drink specials, and raffle prizes at participating businesses. By then Avec will have been open five weeks, and it will be the first holiday season with all three of this year's restaurants open at once.
At The GGL Group, we keep track of Fort Sheridan the way our neighbors do: which storefronts have changed hands, when a new place on Waukegan Avenue actually opens, and how the preserve and the town next door fit into an ordinary week. If you're thinking about what life on the old post looks like through the seasons, or what this year's changes in Highwood mean for your home, we'd be glad to talk. Schedule A Call.