What Actually Filled Hinsdale's Train Station Storefront After a Year of Rumors
If you'd asked anyone downtown last spring what was going into the empty storefront at the Hinsdale Metra station, you'd have gotten the same answer every time: a French place. Oyster bar, croissants for the morning commute, a supper club at night. The owner had already stood up at a Village Board meeting and described it in detail. The name was even settled: Le Jolie.
It never opened.
What moved into 25 E. Hinsdale Ave. instead is a coffee and juice shop from Glencoe, chosen over Le Jolie and eight other proposals by a village committee that spent the better part of a year weighing something the neighborhood's restaurant chatter never quite grasped: this storefront, and the two others that turned over in downtown Hinsdale this year, were never really contests between good ideas and bad ones. They were contests between the flashy pitch and the proven operator. The proven operator keeps winning.
Rich Baca, a Le Jolie owner who had spent seven years as a partner at La Grange's Nicksons Eatery, was already in front of the Village Board making his case in late April 2025, weeks before Casa Margarita's lease at the train station formally expired that May. His pitch was specific and appealing: "a touch of coastal French with American ingenuity," positioned to serve what he called a rhythm of commuters, locals and visitors. It was the kind of concept that gets talked about at the farmers market. It was also, as it turned out, one of nine.
The village opened a formal RFP with a June 26, 2025 submission deadline, and a selection committee made up of Village President Greg Hart, Trustee Alexis Braden, Economic Development Commission Chair Jill Sunderson and staff evaluated all nine proposals against a specific set of criteria, according to The Hinsdalean's coverage of the decision:
About a year after Baca's pitch, the board approved a lease not with Le Jolie but with Hometown Coffee & Juice, a family-run cafe founded in 2018 by Lou and Julie Rubin in Glencoe, with existing locations in Winnetka, Lake Forest and Glenview.
"We were really seeking a tenant who would honor this building and make it a continuing source of pride for the community. I can't think of another restaurant group or organization that would do that like you all. It's going to be, I really, truly, believe, a mainstay."
That's Braden, addressing the Rubins directly at the April 21, 2026 meeting where the lease was approved. Notice what she's praising. Not the menu. Not the concept. The word she reaches for is mainstay.
The lease terms explain the committee's math better than any quote does. Hometown signed on for 11 years with two five-year extensions, starting at $8,239 a month and climbing to $11,193 by year 11, with a minimum $1.25 million commitment to renovate the space, including a patio expansion and moving the entry door to the building's south side. That's a company betting on a two-decade relationship with a 130-year-old train depot, not a first-time operator hoping a single concept lands.
Le Jolie, by contrast, was Baca's first venture as an owner after seven years as a partner elsewhere. Good instincts about coastal French food and commuter rhythms don't show up as line items on a financial capability review. A four-location cafe chain with eight years of operating history does.
Rubin told trustees the Hinsdale location will be the chain's fifth cafe, with a sixth already planned for Northbrook, and that he and Julie built the business specifically to solve what he called the split between coffee shops that let you linger but don't serve real food, and restaurants that serve good food but rush you out. The pitch was less romantic than Le Jolie's. It was also backed by four working locations the committee could actually go visit.
If the train station decision looked like an isolated judgment call, First Street tells you it wasn't. Il Poggiolo closed in June 2025 after 17 years at 8 E. First St., an institution by any downtown measure. What replaced it wasn't a new local restaurateur chasing that address's cachet. It was DeNucci's Italian, the third location for Ballyhoo Hospitality, a 14-restaurant group already operating in Lincoln Park and Highland Park.
DeNucci's didn't come in loud. The group ran the space as takeout-only through December 2025 before opening full-service dining in January 2026 under chef Salvatore Lo Cascio, a phased rollout that Ballyhoo partner Jon Farrer described as deliberate rather than cautious. The group is already planning its next two Chicago-area openings, a Japanese-inspired concept called Zenzi Den and a Mediterranean restaurant at One Winnetka slated for 2027, the kind of pipeline that only exists when a company treats each new address as one move in a longer sequence.
Farrer told Appetito Magazine that Ballyhoo chose Hinsdale for the community itself, not just an available storefront, and that the group grows "with intention." Whether or not that's marketing language, the operating pattern backs it up: a group that already has 14 restaurants doesn't need Hinsdale to work on the first try the way a solo concept does.
The third storefront in this year's turnover isn't even a new operator. It's Fuller House, downtown Hinsdale's family-friendly restaurant since 2015, expanding next door into the nearly 100-year-old building at 50 S. Garfield Ave., designed by local architect R. Harold Zook and most recently home to Dips & Dogs before it closed roughly five years ago. Co-owner Sam Vlahos is calling the new concept Humble Patty, burgers, soft serve and dirty sodas built around what he's described as modernized nostalgia for the old Dips & Dogs crowd.
The Village Board gave the plan a first read in May 2026, and the Plan Commission reviewed it again in early June, with trustees asking Vlahos to consider adding safety barriers along First Street and a bike rack. Vlahos has said the idea sat dormant for years, delayed first by his father's passing and then by four children arriving across the family, and that Humble Patty will run as its own operation, separate staff and systems from Fuller House next door. As of this writing, the opening is still pegged to late summer or fall of this year, with the exact date still moving.
Here again, the pattern holds. The village isn't handing its best remaining storefronts to newcomers testing an idea. It's handing them to people who already have equity, literal and reputational, in the block.
Sixth Street, the four-block all-brick stretch running from Garfield Avenue to County Line Road since the 1890s, has been waiting on its own version of this discipline. The village had planned a $4.5 million reconstruction, with an additional $2 million needed to keep the entire stretch brick rather than asphalt with brick intersections, a roughly $6.5 million total. A 2025 federal budget stopgap stalled the project for a year. In February 2026, Village President Hart confirmed that U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia had secured the $1.1 million grant through an appropriations bill, but Hart was careful to tell Patch that final design details, including materials, hadn't been settled. The utility work underneath, some of it more than 80 years old, still needs replacing before any brick gets touched.
It's the same temperament showing up in infrastructure that showed up in the storefront leases: wait for the funding to be real, get the underlying structure right, and only then commit to what the street looks like on top.
That patience is also what's kept the Hinsdale Farmers Market running long enough to hit a milestone this year. The market marks its 50th anniversary in 2026, back for its usual Monday run at Burlington Park from June 15 through October 12, and it's the same Economic Development Commission behind that market that helps organize the annual Hinsdale Restaurant Week pulling downtown's dining scene together each year. None of these things are flashy. All of them are still here.
If there's one thing worth carrying out of a year of downtown turnover, it's this: the loudest pitch for a Hinsdale storefront is rarely the one that wins it. The village's own committees keep choosing operators who've already proven they can stay.
If you're weighing what any of this downtown activity means for property values or timing a move in Hinsdale, that's a longer conversation, and one AFNR Homes is glad to have. Schedule a complimentary market consultation and bespoke listing plan whenever you're ready.
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