The Oakville Grill & Cellar

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

Where California Wine Country Meets Chicago's Fulton Market

The Oakville Grill & Cellar takes its cues from the laid-back spirit of California wine country and translates them into something distinctly its own on North Green Street. The concept is rooted in a clear philosophy: honest ingredients, live-fire cooking, and a wine program serious enough to earn Wine Spectator's Best of Award of Excellence in 2024.

The room is warm and rustic, and the cooking centers on a wood-burning grill fueled by local white oak — a deliberate choice that shapes everything from a wood-grilled heirloom artichoke sourced from Castroville, CA, to a double-cut bone-in pork chop with maple brine and truffled cream corn. Proteins come from named ranches: Creekstone, Châtel Farms, Greiman Family Farms. The sourcing is taken seriously and the menu says so plainly.

California-Inspired Cuisine with a Midwestern Soul

The Californian cuisine here leans on seasonal produce, responsibly sourced meats, and partnerships with farms and ranches across both California and the Midwest. Salads pull from Werp Farms greens and Burke County corn. Pasta dishes — an angry crab bucatini with spicy pomodoro, a rigatoni alla vodka with roasted tomato cream — sit comfortably alongside grilled Faroe Islands salmon with cheesy stone-ground heirloom grits. Sourdough comes from Phlour Bakery. Coffee is roasted by Petaluma Coffee in Sonoma County. The connections to California are woven throughout, not gestured at.

The Cellar Door and the Wine Program

The wine list runs to more than 750 bottles, with a deliberate emphasis on lesser-known California regions — Santa Barbara County, Santa Ynez Valley AVA, Sta. Rita Hills — rather than the obvious appellations. By the glass, the selection is equally considered: producers like DuMOL, Racines, Massican, and Bedrock appear alongside more accessible pours, all organized to reward curiosity.

At the back of the restaurant sits The Cellar Door, an intimate six-seat tasting room that spotlights a different California vineyard each month, replicating that winery's current tasting menu. It's a genuinely unusual offering in Chicago — part education, part experience — and it reflects how central wine is to everything The Oakville does.

The cocktail list follows the same west-coast logic: a Sauvignon Blanc Martini built with Realm Cellars' Riverbound, a Sonoma Sour finished in a petite sirah barrel. Even the drinks are doing the work.