Coming Soon on Scranton
Samantha (Fasel) Somogyi knows what she wants a Friday night in Lake Bluff to look like. Families at dinner. A game on the TV. Friends finding each other at the bar. Someone celebrating something. And, inevitably, a plan to have one drink that becomes several hours. She and her partners are now building the place for it.
A neighborhood sports pub is taking shape on Scranton Avenue - from a team that knows the neighborhood well.
Bluff’s Pub, coming to 16 E. Scranton Avenue, is a family project led by Samantha and her husband, Kevin Somogyi, along with Samantha’s brother-in-law Rob Zonino and Jake Stern. The group’s roots stretch across Lake Bluff and Lake Forest. Samantha and her sister Maddie were born in Lake Bluff and grew up in Lake Forest; Jake also grew up in Lake Forest. Samantha’s father grew up in Lake Forest, her grandparents and aunts still live here, and Samantha and Kevin are now raising their own family in the village. Maddie and Rob have already put down business roots on the same block as co-owners of Toned Yoga, right next door. When the group started imagining what Lake Bluff was missing, they kept coming back to one thing: a true neighborhood sports pub. Somewhere you can walk to, watch a game, bring the kids for dinner, meet friends for a beer - and probably recognize half the room when you walk through the door. “The kind of place where you walk in and immediately spot someone you know,” Samantha says.
The menu is focused on uncomplicated but delicious food for the whole family: smash burgers, Philly cheesesteaks, wings, chicken tenders, tacos and other pub favorites, alongside beer, cocktails and the classics you’d expect from a neighborhood bar. Samantha loves the smash burger; Rob is all about the Philly cheesesteak. Plans also include outdoor seating along the new tree wells on Scranton Avenue, live music and participation in the block parties and community events that already bring downtown together. The team wants Bluff’s Pub to feel “old and timeless but still fresh and fun,” with Lake Bluff history, family touches, wood, signs and artwork incorporated throughout. Behind the scenes, they’ve spent months figuring out how to fit a full commercial kitchen into a very small space, inch by inch.
They hope to open toward the end of the year. As for what Samantha hopes people will say about Bluff’s Pub shortly after the doors open? “It feels like it’s always been here.”