Walk down Fulton Market on a Tuesday afternoon and you'll see the contradiction in real time. The cannoli window at 852 W Fulton Market already has a line, five months into Labriola Italian Specialties' run there. Down the block, Urbanbelly has settled into 950 W Fulton Street after a spring move, its dining room busy on a weeknight. Meanwhile, the storefront that used to hold Time Out Market still sits dark, and everyone who's lived here through the last two years has an opinion about why.
That's the version of Fulton Market most people already know: a neighborhood that lost some big names and is coasting on reputation. It's not the accurate version. The opening pipeline right now is longer, more specific, and more committed to this stretch of the West Side than the closure headlines suggest, and if you eat here regularly, the next twelve months look nothing like the last two.
The Exits Everyone's Already Heard About
Start with what's true, because the closures are real and worth naming plainly. Time Out Market shut its doors in early 2026, an abrupt end for one of the neighborhood's anchor developments. It joined a list that already included Gus's World Famous Chicken and Kuma's Corner, both of which closed in 2024. For a neighborhood that built its identity on being the place where a Google office move in 2015 triggered a decade of restaurant and retail growth, three closures inside two years read like a turning point.
Here's the complication: Google itself is part of the story now. The company's new headquarters at the old Thompson Center in the Loop is slated to open next year, which means Fulton Market's original anchor tenant is packing up its office core at the same time the neighborhood is supposedly cooling on the restaurant side. If the closures were the whole story, this would be the moment things go quiet.
They haven't.
What's Actually Moving Into Those Blocks
Do-Rite Donuts, the chicken-and-donut shop that's held its spot near the Green Line's Morgan stop for almost a decade, reopened this spring with a renovated, more efficient storefront. The menu didn't change. The building did.
Labriola Italian Specialties opened April 22 at 852 W Fulton Market, the newest concept from Doughboy Restaurant Group and longtime Chicago baker Rich Labriola, known locally for Stan's Donuts and his Oak Brook restaurants. The Fulton Market build brings pizza, house-made pasta, and a walk-up cannoli window, designed to work as a lunch spot on weekdays and a later-night destination on weekends.
Urbanbelly's move is the more interesting story, because it's a homecoming. Chef Bill Kim's Asian comfort food restaurant closed its Wicker Park location at the end of April and relocated into 950 W Fulton Street in early May, a return to a neighborhood where Kim previously operated BellyQ and had a presence inside Time Out Market before that development closed. The new address sits inside a larger multi-concept complex from Taratsa Hospitality Partners that also includes Morgan's on Fulton, the Greek fast-casual spot Pitaki, and the live music venue The Wild Hare, with a fifth concept still unannounced.
| Where | What's Coming | When |
|---|---|---|
| 852 W Fulton Market | Labriola Italian Specialties | Opened April 22, 2026 |
| 950 W Fulton Street | Urbanbelly (relocated from Wicker Park) | Opened early May 2026 |
| 951 W Fulton Market | Omakai Sushi flagship | Before end of 2026 |
| River North | Omakai hand-roll bar | Before end of 2026 |
| Fulton Market | Osaka Nikkei, second U.S. location | Later in 2026 |
| 500 N. Clark St., River North | Mr. Noble (Noble 33) | Early 2027 |
| Fulton Market | Coba Maya (Noble 33) | Later 2027 |
| 3455 N. Elston Ave., Avondale | Zoomies indoor dog park and bar | Targeting fall 2026 |
The Names Nobody Local Predicted
The Omakai Sushi news is the one that says the most about how the neighborhood reads from the outside. Omakai has never operated a restaurant outside Florida since it opened in Wynwood in 2019. Its first move beyond that market is a 66-seat Fulton Market flagship at 951 W Fulton Market, the address that used to house Roister, the Michelin-starred restaurant from The Alinea Group. The company is also opening a separate 30-seat hand-roll counter in River North. Both are expected to open before the end of 2026, according to the company's director of marketing. A restaurant group with zero locations outside its home state chose Fulton Market and River North as the place to make that leap, not a safer bet in a more established dining corridor.
Osaka Nikkei, the Peruvian-Japanese concept founded in 2001, is doing something similar. This will be its second U.S. location, and the company is bringing dishes developed across a global footprint that spans Lima, Miami, Bogota, and Dubai to a Fulton Market address later this year.
And then there's Noble 33, the hospitality group behind Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes's 1587 Prime steakhouse in Kansas City. The company just announced two new Chicago concepts. Mr. Noble, an upscale brasserie, is taking over 500 N. Clark St. in River North, the former home of José Andrés's Jaleo and its basement lounge Pigtail before both closed in January 2025. Coba Maya, a Mexican concept, is landing in Fulton Market. Neither opens until 2027, which tells you something the closure headlines don't: a hospitality company with locations in Houston, West Hollywood, Toronto, and London is willing to commit more than a year out to two addresses in this neighborhood.
Even the Dogs Are Getting More Square Footage
The clearest sign that the neighborhood's growth logic hasn't changed is happening a few miles north in Avondale, and it isn't even a restaurant. Zoomies is converting a 24,000-square-foot former manufacturing warehouse at 3455 N. Elston Ave. into what's billed as the city's first indoor dog park paired with a full-service bar and cafe. Founder Devon Brown secured the building last year, cleared a liquor moratorium on the block through the City Council, and is now targeting a fall 2026 opening with memberships already available ahead of the doors opening.
It's a different category entirely, but the same instinct that's driving Omakai and Noble 33 into Fulton Market and River North: bigger spaces, longer commitments, aimed at a part of the city that's still worth building in.
What This Looks Like If You Already Live Here
None of this requires you to do anything. If you're already in Fulton Market, River North, or nearby, the practical version is simpler than the news cycle makes it sound. You already have a new Italian counter for lunch and a homecoming restaurant worth trying again. Behind them: a sushi flagship from a company betting its first move outside Florida on your neighborhood, still on track before the year ends, and two Noble 33 addresses that won't open until next year. If you're a dog owner further north, there's a warehouse in Avondale worth watching for a fall opening date.
The closures were real, and they'll keep coming up in conversation because that's what closures do. But the addresses filling in behind them, backed by real leases, real build-out timelines, and in Noble 33's case, a commitment that runs into 2027, are the better indicator of where this stretch of the city is actually headed.
If watching a neighborhood evolve like this has you thinking about what it means for your own address, or where you'd want to be if you moved a few blocks in either direction, that's a conversation Nina Trivedi is glad to have. Start the Conversation.
