Glenwood Oaks restaurant quietly pivots to private events only, no public dining

Chicago Tribune

a day ago

A restaurant fixture for more than four decades in Glenwood has, apparently for many weeks, been closed to the public for dining in order to focus on private events.
Glenwood Oaks & Dos Caminos, 106 N. Main, operated for many years as Glenwood Oaks Rib & Chophouse.
The shift to private events only may have been driven by declining traffic on the public restaurant side, worsened by ongoing road construction near Glenwood Oaks, a Glenwood official said Tuesday.
'The restaurant itself just wasn't sustainable,' said James 'JR' Patton, village administrator.
He and Glenwood's new mayor, Toleda Hart, met with Glenwood Oaks owner Murad 'Mike' Husain in June. At that point, the public dining area had already been closed, Patton said.
Husain did not return a message left Tuesday seeking comment.
Someone who answered the phone at the business said the restaurant had been event-only since recently, but said he had just started at the business and would not give his name.
The restaurant was founded in 1974 by the Jaorsky family, who sold it in the summer of 2019.
At the corner of Main Street and Chicago Heights-Glenwood Road, Glenwood Oaks was the go-to spot for special occassions, including anniversaries, birthdays, school reunions and holiday brunches.
Before her passing in August 2008 at the age of 92, Linda Jarosky, mother of the restaurant's owners, was the face of Glenwood Oaks for many years, greeting customers as hostess, according to her obituary.
'It was a pretty large institution in the village,' Patton, hired in May as administrator, said. He previously was a Calumet City alderman.
He said Hart wanted to meet with business owners to talk about any obstacles they were facing, and, because of its prominence, Glenwood Oaks was high on the list.
Husain didn't say the business was struggling, but 'he intimated traffic was slow,' Patton said.
'I think the restaurant side of the business wasn't doing it for him,' he said.
Before closing to public dining, Husain had made 'significant improvements' to the inside and outside of the business, which got a more modern exterior makeover. Patton said the cost of that coupled with slow restaurant traffic may have been factors in concentrating on private events only.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Glenwood Oaks got a village loan to build an outdoor patio when indoor dining became problematic, or even not possible.
Glenwood and many other suburbs worked out ways to carve out street-side or outside dining for restaurants that had lacked it prior to the pandemic. A lingering effect of the pandemic on restaurants has been a large shift to carry-out or drive-through business, which has reduced inside dining.
The suburbs have seen growth of a number of businesses that are drive-through only, including Portillo's, which early this year opened a drive-through/to-go restaurant with no inside dining on La Grange Road in Orland Park.
Glenwood Oaks was approved for a $300,000 loan, but borrowed about $220,000, and last fall the village was pressing the business to become current on loan repayments.
In an October letter, Husain was informed by Glenwood he must immediately pay the full remaining balance of his loan due to missed payments since April 15, 2023.
Since its acquisition by new owners just before the pandemic, the business began to struggle, prompting Husain to ask the village for the loan, a village official said last fall, after the letter to Glenwood Oaks was sent.
Patton said he was not entirely familiar with the status of payments or the village's agreement with Glenwood Oaks, but said the business has 'made some payments toward satisfying the loan.'