Lettuce Entertain You Reboots Hubbard Street Nightclub With Popular Pizza

A Hubbard Street celebrity hangout for music and dancing that closed in February 2019 is reborn with a new name and pizza from a popular North Side restaurant. Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises last year teased that Dance Studio Vol. 1 would replace the dearly departed Studio Paris at 59 W. Hubbard Street. Chicago’s largest restaurant company has announced the newly named nightclub will officially open on Saturday with live music, “surprise entertainment,” and bottle service.

Studio Paris drew celebrities like Chance The Rapper and high-profile DJs to River North. The new Dance Studio is a partnership between Lettuce and LA promoters Fred and Brian Grimmel. Fred Grimmel is known as DJ Fred Matters and performed at the old Studio Paris. The new space features a large dance floor in the center, and the walls are decorated with placards to recognize the night’s best dancers.

Lettuce is partnering with Happy Camper, the mini-chain of pizza bars with locations in Old Town and Wrigleyville whose ownership also operates Homeslice in Lincoln Park and Paradise Park in Wicker Park. Happy Camper’s pizza will be available at Dance Studio by the slice or as whole pies. The brand is popular with millennials, and the spaces are Instagram friendly and morph from sports to DJs at night.

Iachelli said he’s known the Melmans, the family which owns Lettuce Entertain You, for years. He’s looked up to Lettuce and is excited to work with them. Dance Studio will offer a scaled-down food menu, late-night hours, and a new pizza window inside the club.

There’s an extended pop-up feel to Lettuce Entertain You’s announcement. Dance Studio Vol. 1 will close in January 2022 and be replaced by Dance Studio Vol. 2, according to a news release. There’s no further intel to that mysterious news. Iachelli has no further intel on Volume 2 and Happy Camper’s role going forward.

“I hope we get to be part of it,” Iachelli said with a laugh. “But we’ll have to see how many slices go out at that place.”

This is Lettuce’s first major announcement under the company division once supervised by chef/partner Doug Psaltis. He left Lettuce Entertain You in November under unclear circumstances. Later this month, the company plans to open RPM Seafood along the Chicago River. That’s another of Psaltis’s old projects.

But along Hubbard Street, where the bars are buzzing until late on the weekends, Lettuce Entertain You hopes to attract private and corporate events, plus bachelorette parties. And if that won’t work, Dance Studio Vol. 2 will try something new next year.

Dance Studio Vol.1, 58 W. Kinzie Street, open 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday; 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Saturday; Ownership will announce programming for other nights soon.