My wife and I took a long weekend in Chicago not long ago and she wanted to go to the Spice House in Evanston to get some herbs and spices. It was around 1:30 p.m. and my wife's stomach was starting to growl from lack of food. I really didn't know what was in the area, but my wife looked up some food options in the area on her phone. She mentioned a bistro that wasn't too far away, a place named Ten Mile House.
As you can see in the logo to the left, it says that Ten Mile House was re-established in 2014. The original Ten Mile House dates back to 1836 when Major Edward Mulford became one of the first settlers in the area after the Potowatomie Indian tribe was relocated by treaty to what would be present day Iowa. The Green Bay Trail - a military trail that turned into a stagecoach trail after the Indian tribes had been located - had its southern terminus at the Chicago courthouse. Mulford built a stage stop/post office/tavern at a spot that was 10 miles north of the start of the Green Bay Trail and called it Ten Mile House. The city of Ridgeville evolved around the Ten Mile House and the building also became the first courthouse in the area, as well.
Ridgeville existed until 1857 when the Illinois General Assembly decreed that the Township of Evanston would annex Ridgeville. Ridgeville ceased to exist and Ten Mile House was no longer needed as a public building. Mulford ended up building another house - the first two story house in Evanston - and sold the original Ten Mile House to James Kirk who renovated the building into a mansion. The mansion was eventually bought years later, razed and today the St. Francis Hospital sits on its former site.
In 2014, three Chicago restaurant veterans - Joe Krouse (Unite Urban Grill), Robert LaPata (La Petite Amelia and Omaggio), and Frederic Gale (Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group) - leased the corner spot on the ground level of the Central Station building near Ryan Field, home of Northwestern University's football team. At first, they were going to call the new restaurant the Wood Shed as they were going to serve smoked meats and wood-fired pizza. However, before they opened, the trio decided to change the name as a nod to Evanston's past and to connote the atmosphere of community gathering such as what occurred at the original Ten Mile House over 150 year before. The re-established Ten Mile House opened in December of 2014.
Ten Mile House is located at the southwest corner of Central Street and Eastwood Ave. north of downtown Evanston. (see map) We were able to find a metered parking space just down the street, just across from the Evanston Art Center.
The restaurant is an open space with a lot of natural light coming in from the outside. An open kitchen area is toward the back. It had a sort of contemporary decor to the place with a high ceiling with LED lights. But they had some interesting shelves with candle-style LED lights hanging at intervals across the restaurant.
The bar area featured a small three-sided bar with a small back bar area and a couple of flat screen televisions on the wall.
We were seated at a table next to a window that looked out onto Central. We were given menus and found that they were in the midst of serving brunch and had a limited menu compared the lunch menu they have through the week. We'd had a hearty breakfast hours before in downtown Chicago and I wasn't really wanting to get breakfast for a second meal in a row.
The brunch offerings did entice, however. They had a smoked corned beef hash that sounded good, as did the frosted-corn flake brioche French toast topped with berries and a blueberry maple syrup. But I was there for a sandwich and they didn't have much to choose from.
They had a number of salads on the brunch menu and that was fine with my wife. She ended up getting the grilled salmon salad - an herb-crusted salmon that is grilled and placed on a bed of mixed greens with artichokes, asparagus, fingerling potatoes, and tomatoes mixed in. It's topped with a French feta cheese and finished with a lemon-garlic vinaigrette. She also got a glass of the Peyruchet blend of sauvignon blanc and semillion to go along with the salad. She thought everything was very good.
My choices were very limited, but all were good choices. They had a grilled cheese sandwich that you could add smoked corned beef or bacon (or both!), a breakfast sandwich with eggs, ham, bacon, creamy poblano pepper strips and topped with a green chile hollandaise sauce, or the Cuban sandwich that I wasn't to whippy on getting.
I ended up with the Ten Mile House prime burger - a half-pound wood-grilled prime beef burger served on Texas toast with a smoked tomato aioli. For an upcharge, I was able to get some cheese on the burger and I asked our server if she could have the kitchen put some gruyere cheese on it. Only, they forgot to put the cheese on it. When I pointed it out to our server, she offered to take the burger back and get me a new one with the cheese. But I'd already taken a couple bites out of it and it was fine enough without the cheese.
While I think it would have been better with the gruyere cheese, the prime burger at Ten Mile House was very good. It had a great beefy flavor, there was a hint of a smoky wood flavor from the cooking process, and I liked the Texas toast with the burger. I had a pint of the American pale ale from the Brickstone brewery out of Bourbonnais, IL to go with the burger.
For stumbling upon Ten Mile House in Evanston and not knowing what to expect, it turned out to be a pretty positive experience. My wife was very happy with her herb-crusted grilled salmon salad. And while I wanted more of a choice of sandwiches due to the limited menu that comes with their weekend brunch, I felt their prime burger was very good. Other than forgetting my gruyere cheese on my burger, the service we had was very good, as well. It was a nice, laid-back atmosphere at Ten Mile House and I would like to get back there again at some point to try more of their food without the restrictions of the brunch menu.
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