Closings

Certified Organic Pizzeria Crust Closes in Wicker Park

Photo: courtesy Crust

The end-of-year carnage continues. Crust, an all-organic pizza restaurant located on Division, has decided to close, pointing to high rent as the cause, Eater reports. Crust hasn’t had a lot of media attention paid to it in recent years, but when it opened in 2007 it got a lot of press for two reasons, one good, one messy. The first was that chef Michael Altenberg, who also owns Bistro Campagne on Lincoln, planned it as Chicago’s first organically-certified restaurant. The second was a partnership that had fallen apart: initially Altenberg brought in Charles Foulkes, who had been selling bread at farmer’s markets (and to restaurants including Bistro Campagne) under the brand name Crust, as his baker-in-chief. But by the time it opened, they had parted ways— and Foulkes was none too happy that Altenberg had kept the name Crust for his restaurant.

Lawyers were involved, Foulkes appears to have left the food world and gone back to his day job as a purser for American Airlines, but in the end Crust (as it was also called) opened and managed a respectable 4-1/2 year run as a neighborhood spot, if never quite getting the love its organic concept might have predicted. According to general manager Todd Feinberg, who also manages Bistro Campagne, he and Altenberg will focus their attention on that restaurant for now.

Certified Organic Pizzeria Crust Closes in Wicker Park