Smoked seafood may soon be on the menu again at Calumet Fisheries, the famed Southeast Side eatery that has been under reconstruction since fire tore through it last November.
Part owner Mark Kotlick was praying to reopen by the end of Lent on March 31, the take-out spot’s busiest season. But he needs a few more weeks to order custom-made refrigerators and deli counters. He hopes to reopen by mid-April and announce a specific date in the coming weeks.
“It’s bad timing for this. Our customers are raring for us to go,” Kotlick said Tuesday.
Kotlick says the restaurant will look as it did before the Nov. 21 fire — but with brand new equipment. He hired a local artist to make the signs in the same style as the originals.
The only difference will be a slightly smaller interior space because he had to build a staff restroom that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The 96-year-old building predated many of the city’s building requirements. “It’s going to be awesome. I’ve been duct taping that store for 30 years,” he said.
Contractors are wrapping up work at the eatery at 3259 E. 95th St., in the Southeast Side’s South Deering neighborhood. New drywall was recently installed. Next comes painting and trim, he said.
“It’s been a stressful couple of months,” he said. “Everything was destroyed.”
The restaurant — famous for its high-profile customers, including Vice President Kamala Harris and the late Anthony Bourdain — struggled briefly before the fire.
City inspectors ordered it closed Oct. 31 after finding evidence of rodents. The eatery eventually passed an inspection. But an electrical fire erupted three days after opening, destroying everything but the building’s frame.
Kotlick intends to rehire the same staff. He’s been covering the payroll of a few of them, some who’ve worked there for decades.
“I don’t want to lose them,” he said.
He wants a grand reopening event with the alderperson and maybe Dan Aykroyd, whose Blues Brothers flick immortalized the nearby 95th Street bridge with a car jump, he said. But that celebration may have to wait until sometime after reopening.
“We want to get the kinks out,” he said. That may take a few weeks. “We literally have to reorder everything.”
The fisheries building was built in 1928, he said. The store was transferred to his dad and uncle in 1948. Kotlick grew up just five minutes from the restaurant and worked there in high school and college.
He eventually took over the eatery around 1989, sharing ownership with five other relatives, and serving as its president while working a full-time job as a construction project manager.
Kotlick, 69, has since retired to Florida, where he remotely manages the store and reconstruction.
“It’s very easy to run a store on the internet,” he says.
