Home > Chicago Restaurants > Austrian > Jolane's Cafe and Wine Bar

Apparently, even though Abt Electronics CEO Bob Abt has a wildly successful and ridiculously large showroom in Glenview, he always wanted to open a restaurant. So in February 2008, they added a full-service restaurant to their already expansive campus, which includes Sony and Apple mini-stores, a massive fountain and some really, really massive home theater displays. A 100-seat spot with an 80-seat patio for the warmer months, Jolane's is actually not located in the store's main building, but rather inside a newer design center just south.

For years, Abt has proffered free chocolate-chip cookies and Julius Meinl coffee to shoppers, so an on-site coffee shop wasn't too far of a departure. "But we like to do everything," says Mike Abt, Bob's son and president of the company. So the cafe concept snowballed into a menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with fairly hefty selection of wine. Now, the cozy cafe mostly feeds hungry shoppers mulling over a big purchase and provides a quieter spots for kitchen and bathroom design consultants to chat with their customers away from the flurry of the salesfloor. But as word gets out, the Abts hope regulars will return for unique offerings like Nutella-filled crepes, champagne-spiked juice cocktails, pear and brie sandwiches and prosciutto paninis. And the name Jolane? It's actually the full name of Bob's mother, who founded the store with husband David Abt in 1936.

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Glenview restaurants, Austrian restaurants, Dessert restaurants, European restaurants, Salad restaurants, Sandwich restaurants, Soup restaurants