OUR STORY

We’re the sound the front door to your first apartment made when it closed. The yellow fridge in your basement that’s survived two floods and outlived three stainless steel French-door models. (And the sound of you cracking ice cubes out of the little plastic trays when the fourth model quits making them, too.)

 

We're the fifteen feet of unpainted curb between the Tow Zone and the Pay to Park; the sweatshirt in your closet from 1996 that still looks as good today as it did back then. We’re the loose-fit jeans that somehow look brand-new again.

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For more than 30 years, The Pasta Bowl has been feeding Chicagoans huge portions of pasta right in their own neighborhoods. What started w/ one guy quitting his job and opening a laid-back little restaurant in the heart of Lincoln Park has since grown into three iconic locations, a bar, a whole lotta marinara, and a community of regulars that just keeps getting bigger. Over the years, we’ve seen first dates become engagements, engagements become families, and plenty of spaghetti end up on the floor. Through it all, we’ve stuck to what we know works: have fun, take care of people, and make food worth coming back for.

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There’s nothing sexy about us. But there is something undeniably irresistible. We’ve been doing the same thing now for 30 years, and not much has changed. We’re just doing more of it.

 

We’ve seen a lot of restaurants come and go in Chicago over the last three decades. The ones who’ve stayed are like us, because at the end of the long, stressful day, everyone wants something they can count on. Something warm, comforting, and familiar. Maybe something that reminds you of how it was, or how it should be. But definitely something that reminds you that you’re home, you’re safe, you’re good.

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Also, we make really good pasta.