Batter & Berries offers a new take on breakfast favorites

CHICAGO (WLS) -- They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that's certainly the case at a cafe in Lincoln Park.

They focus on the batter and the berries, and just about everything on the menu is made in-house.

It took Derek Rylon about 20 years to break out on his own after having worked in a number of kitchens in Chicago. He and his partners opened their dream restaurant on North Lincoln Avenue, where they focus hard on the first half of the day, offering some surprising new twists to breakfast and lunch.

If you eat with your eyes, then you'll be full before you take the first bite, because the plates are loaded with color at Batter and Berries in Lincoln Park. Best example: the French toast flight.

"The flight is a different flavor of French toast which include our strawberry, blueberry, lemon, caramel and our flavor of the week," Rylon, chef and co-owner, said.

You've probably seen chicken and waffles around town, but you haven't seen anything like Rylon's version.

"We use a sweet potato batter, with the fried chicken inside the waffle; a piece of fried chicken outside the waffle with a sweet nutmeg hot sauce I make in-house. Also top with our maple butter that we make in-house," he said.

Omelets are, of course, a big deal at a breakfast joint, but here, rather than embed the ingredients inside, they make the omelet, then top it off. In this case, with giant shrimp and sautéed vegetables saddled next to a mountain of hash browns.

"We want to show you the freshness of the omelet on top of the omelet," Rylon said.

There's more than just breakfast here. Jumbo shrimp also shows up in a towering salad, dressed in white wine and garlic; a house-made Reuben, meanwhile, would almost certainly feed two.

"We also make our sausage in-house, our biscuits in-house. We pull our own pork, we grind our own burgers in-house, we do everything in-house," he said.

Batter & Berries

2748 N Lincoln Ave

(773) 248-7710