Black Briar Fires Up in Fulton Market With Coal-FHearth Menu

Black Briar, a 110-seat modern American restaurant built around a coal-fired hearth, opened September 26 in Chicago's Fulton Market neighborhood, marking chef Jimmy Papadopoulos's return to the city's dining scene after a five-year absence.

Papadopoulos runs the kitchen with co-owner and operator Tim Anderson. The two previously worked together at Bellemore, a Boka Restaurant Group restaurant that closed during the pandemic. Papadopoulos also served as executive chef of Bohemian House, where his Central European cooking built a loyal following. Black Briar occupies the former Bar Takito space.

The room holds a 20-seat central bar with a wraparound liquor display, standard and counter-height tables, and U-shaped booths. Karen Herold of Studio K Creative designed the interior around the concept's "forged in fire" theme.

"We curated natural, rugged materials like reclaimed wood flooring and a leather bar that will nicely patina," Herold said. "Just as the fire draws out deeper flavor in the food, these materials look and feel better with time."

Design details include firewood stacked beside the window booths, shelves of spirits and provisions, and an antique butcher block from Argentina repurposed as the host stand. Herold wanted the space to feel established from day one. Anderson put it plainly: "When you walk in day one, you ask, 'How long has this been here?'"

How does the hearth shape the menu?

The menu draws on traditional American tavern dishes, giving Papadopoulos familiar formats he can push further. The coal-fired hearth cooks both proteins and produce, and it anchors several signatures:

• Grilled sourdough and grilled lobster rice
• Hawaiian rolls with coal-roasted pineapple butter
• Pork short ribs with coal-roasted sweet potatoes
• Venison tartare and hamachi with green apple ponzu
• Pear salad, mafaldine bolognese with lamb belly pancetta
• New York strip steak, and halibut with garlic butter, potatoes and clams

The list also spans salads, chilled seafood, pasta, meat and fish.

"For me, cooking is very much like music," Papadopoulos said. "You've got the same notes. It's really about how you arrange them. I love finding ways to strike the familiar, but do it in a way that's just a little more unique to my style."

What happens at the bar?

Anderson oversees the beverage program, which mirrors the kitchen's approach by folding hearth ingredients and techniques into familiar cocktail structures. The Ember Collins mixes gin, Suze, charred grapefruit, jasmine and soda. The Coal Train combines tequila, mezcal and coal-roasted pineapple.

"The kitchen leads; we follow," Anderson said. "We're looking at what the chefs are using, how they're using it, and what we can fold into the bar while still giving the drinks their own identity."

That bar-kitchen loop — one coal-roasted ingredient moving from plate to glass — gives Black Briar a coherent operational identity rather than a scattered opening menu. For Fulton Market, a corridor that keeps trading on chef-driven openings, the arrival reunites two operators with a proven track record from Bellemore and signals Papadopoulos intends to make his comeback stick.