Michigan Avenue’s New Star-Studded Restaurant Debuts in the Former Hard Rock Hotel

Free Rein, the restaurant inside the St. Jane Chicago hotel, opened this morning giving hotel guests, tourists, and downtown workers a compelling new option for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Restaurant executive chef Aaron Lirette comes from GreenRiver, the shuttered cocktail bar and restaurant from Danny Meyer (Shake Shack) and company where his cooking earned a Michelin star. The desserts come from Evan Sheridan, a pastry chef who impressed Michelin inspectors as executive pastry chef at Sixteen, the restaurant inside the Trump International Hotel & Tower.

The St. Jane was once the Hard Rock Hotel and Free Rein has replaced Chuck’s: A Kerry Simon Kitchen. Its owners are going for a type of Midwestern brasserie by using French technique and local ingredients. The breakfast menu features recognizable items like pancakes and smoothies. A breakfast sandwich comes with Calabrian sausage on an English muffin. Staff will serve salads, sandwiches (a soft-shell crab BLT), and entrees like halibut or a chicken pot pie for lunch. Large-format dishes come out for dinner including dover sole, a 40-ounce dry-aged beef ribeye, and a whole-roasted chicken.

Check out the menus below. Free Rein is now open.

Free Rein, 224 N. Michigan Avenue inside the St. Jane Chicago hotel, open 6:30 a.m. to midnight on Monday through Thursday; 7:30 a.m. to midnight on Friday and Saturday; 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday. Reservations available via OpenTable.