Buona Terra Ristorante, the beloved neighborhood restaurant at 2535 N. California Avenue is getting ready to close its doors after twenty-one years.
Co-owners Eileen Gregg Garcia and Jose “Chepe” Garcia have decided to close the Italian restaurant and consolidate it with their Irving Park restaurant Hearth & Crust, located at 3608 W. Irving Park Road, according to Block Club Chicago. The husband-and-wife owners recently announced that Buona Terra Logan Square will officially close on March 18, while the new consolidated restaurant, which will be called Buona Terra, will reopen on April 1, 2023.
“We know this will be a great change for our customers, but we will continue to serve all your favorite menu items that you have grown to love for the past 21 years,” the couple recently wrote on the restaurant’s Facebook. “We will also have all of the exciting menu items from Hearth And Crust, including delicious thin-crust pizza. We are so grateful to the Logan Square community for so many years of friendship and delicious memories. We thank you for your continued loyalty and support and look forward to serving you at our new location.”
When the new Buona Terra opens, customers can expect some of the “greatest hits” from both eateries, such as Buona Terra’s rigatoni dish and Hearth & Crust’s brick-oven pizza. Gregg Garcia and her husband opened Buona Terra in 2002, and it quickly became a neighborhood favorite for families and date nights. The two then opened Hearth & Crust in 2017, with long-term plans to eventually merge the two. Gregg Garcia tells Block Club Chicago the pandemic sped up their timeline.
“Buona Terra has been an amazing part of our lives,” Gregg Garcia tells the publication. “We know we’ve touched a lot of lives in Logan Square with our food, but we knew that it was time to make the change. It’s been hard to find staff to relieve our employees. Our employees stuck with us all through the pandemic. They were loyal, they ran the ship. When it came time for them to take a break and have vacations, we’d have to close the restaurant entirely. … It became apparent that wasn’t the most cost-effective way to run a restaurant.”
