The Franklin Room Debuts New American Menu with Global Influences
August 7, 2026
After a decade as River North’s lower-level whiskey and fine spirits lounge, The Franklin Room has spent the past year quietly becoming one of the most ambitious kitchens in the neighborhood — same address, same spirits wall, an entirely new reason to come back.
Walk down the staircase into The Franklin Room at 675 N. Franklin St. in Chicago, and the room announces itself before the menu does. Backlit glass cabinets run the length of the back bar, stacked bottle-deep with bourbon, rye, and exquisite spirits, likely making it one of the most extensive collections in Chicago.
The Franklin Room in River North, Chicago. Photo courtesy of The Franklin Room
Herringbone tile catches the low light; tufted banquettes curve around marble-topped tables built for two plates or six. The room looks almost exactly like it did when it opened in 2015 — a proper whiskey lounge and restaurant, confident, warm, and dim, the kind of place built for people who take their spirits seriously.
What’s changed is what’s coming out of the kitchen behind it, and that’s the part worth leaving one's home for.
The bar area at The Franklin Room is well-appointed for lovers of exquisite spirits.
For its first decade, The Franklin Room built its reputation on that back bar and a menu of sandwich-driven tavern fare — food built to be eaten alongside a whiskey neat, not admired on a plate. Chef Namo Chowcharoen has been in the building since opening night in 2015. He joined as a line cook on opening day, which also happened to be his birthday, a coincidence he still treats as something close to fate. His rise from there was not gentle.
When the pandemic shut The Franklin Room’s doors, Chowcharoen went looking for something else to cook. He spent the pandemic closure working at Union Sushi, one of The Franklin Room’s sister restaurants. He returned when The Franklin Room reopened, coming back convinced the room deserved more than it had been serving.
Chef Namo Chowcharoen has introduced his new menu: New American with Global Influences photo credit: Inna Petrova
After the executive chef at The Franklin Room left without warning, Chowcharoen — who had never even held the title of sous chef — was handed the kitchen and told to run it.
“Even in a relatively small space, I knew we could do better,” he says. “Higher quality, higher dining experience.” He steadily built the trust of his kitchen team and elevated the menu, moving well beyond the original tavern fare and sandwiches.
The Franklin Room's new menu is New American with Global Influences photo credit: Sanjib Karmakar
His newest menu debuted July 16; he masterfully built it over the past year. He calls the new menu New American with Global Influences. “This is American food with global influence,” he says — not fusion, a term he avoids on purpose. Fusion, to him, implies blurring of cuisines, but what’s on the menu now is closer to translation, dish by dish, each one built on a technique or ingredient sourced and handled the way its country of origin actually demands. No shortcuts. Every cuisine represented on the menu, he says, carries decades of culture behind it that a substitution would disrespect.
Consider what that looks like on the table. The shareable bar snacks Crispy Larb Winglets ($14) arrive dusted in traditional larb seasoning, with crackling kaffir lime leaves and a yuzu-blue cheese dip — Thai in spirit, bar food in form.
The Beef Tartare appetizer ($21) does more: American in cut, finished with chili crisps and smoked gouda, with pickled shiitake mushrooms doing the work a cornichon usually would.
Beef Tartare at The Franklin Room photo credit: Sanjib Karmakar
Main selections include a whole Branzino ($45), dressed not in butter and herbs but in a scallion-soy glaze with lemon caper and rice tajin, a nod to the technique’s Southeast Asian roots. The Coconut Marinated Steak “Bavette” ($38) takes its cue from Thailand as well, its flap steak soaked in coconut milk and finished with a bright tomato salsa. Even the Seafood Ramen ($28, offered as a rotating special) leans global before it leans comforting: a spicy miso tonkotsu broth carries marinated egg and nori alongside more familiar tomato and fennel.
Coconut Marinated Steak "Bavette" at The Franklin Room photo credit: Sanjib Karmakar
None of the menu items read like a chef showing off his passport stamps. Rather, they showcase a kitchen where the mixing is structural, not decorative — down to tableware Chowcharoen sourced specifically so that each plate visually signals the country it’s pulling from before a guest takes the first bite.
The menu wasn’t built alone, either. Chowcharoen drew dishes out of his own cooks’ backgrounds rather than dictating every plate from the top — a sous chef’s Japanese training shows up on the menu, and so does another cook’s Puerto Rican palate. Longtime regulars won’t be stranded by any of it: the lamb chops, the oysters, the mussels, the dishes with a loyal following from the old menu, are staying put on purpose.
“I want people to know who I am through my food,” Chowcharoen says, and that includes the parts of him that have already been on the menu for a decade.
None of this works without a room built to hold it, and that part has belonged to one person for all ten years. Michael Lacson has run The Franklin Room’s floor since before it had a name, and he has a theory about why the room has lasted a decade in a business where most restaurants don’t.
General Manager Michael Lacson photo credit: Inna Petrova
“If a fork or a knife or a chopstick falls, my team and I know where it is, immediately, and we are on it,” he says — not a boast, more a job description. He calls it the swan theory: guests see the calm surface, never the motion underneath.
Lacson cites famed restaurateur Danny Meyer - founder and executive chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group - as a major influence. Lacson actually traveled to New York to attend one of Meyer's training classes, and he holds Meyer in especially high regard, having toured Meyer’s restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern, before The Franklin Room opened its doors.
The restaurant's spirits program has deepened since the opening: the display case is three hundred bottles deep in bourbon and rye alone, and there is an equally serious collection of mezcal.
The Franklin Room's display wall showcases a collection of more than 300 brands photo credit: Inna Petrova
The cocktail menu includes inspired specialty cocktails ($18-$22 per cocktail) — The Franklin Room Old Fashioned, built on Angel’s Envy Rye and cherry bark vanilla bitters, and The Beet Queen, a mezcal-and-beet-juice pour finished with pistachio orgeat, among them — and the bar team creates custom off-menu drinks for regulars on request.
The Franklin Room's classic Old Fashioned cocktail photo credit: Inna Petrova
Specialty cocktails at The Franklin Room, which also crafts custom cocktails upon request photo credit: Inna Petrova
Desserts ($5-$12) get the same attention to detail. An Opera cake layers dark chocolate mousse and mascarpone with coffee buttercream and a cocoa crumble; a Mango and Coconut Tart pairs mango sorbet with passion fruit mousse and toasted coconut. For something lighter, a rotating sorbet and gelato selection — raspberry-mango, strawberry lychee-red wine, dark chocolate, salted caramel — closes the meal without weighing it down.
The Opera dessert at The Franklin Room photo credit: Sanjib Karmakar
Guests looking to linger can pair dessert with a glass from the restaurant’s digestif list, including a 30-year-old tawny port.
Lacson is quick to correct the assumption that whiskey and spirits are the whole story. “They’re both very equal,” he says of food and beverage now. “We provide the space and the hospitality for it.”
What’s opening, in other words, isn’t a new restaurant. It’s the same lower-level room, the same spirits wall, the same GM who has run it since day one — pointed, now, at a kitchen with something to prove. That’s a harder story to tell than a grand opening, and a better one to eat through.
Chowcharoen has already spent ten years demonstrating he isn’t going anywhere; this menu is what he’s been building toward the whole time.
About The Franklin Room Located in Chicago’s River North neighborhood at 675 N. Franklin St., The Franklin Room is a lower-level whiskey and spirits lounge and dining room led by general manager Michael Lacson and chef Namo Chowcharoen. Open since 2015, the restaurant is known for one of the most extensive spirits collections in Chicago alongside a New American menu built on global influences.
Private Events The Franklin Room offers a variety of options for private events, both large and small. The entire restaurant is available for private and semi-private celebrations for groups of up to 100 guests. The back dining area is appointed especially for semi-private gatherings, and the front bar area is ideal for cocktail-style receptions. Whatever the purpose or scale of your event, there’s a spot for it. Learn more at franklinroom.com/private-events.
Worth a Taste
Walk down the staircase into The Franklin Room at 675 N. Franklin St. in Chicago, and the room announces itself before the menu does. Backlit glass cabinets run the length of the back bar, stacked bottle-deep with bourbon, rye, and exquisite spirits, likely making it one of the most extensive collections in Chicago.
Herringbone tile catches the low light; tufted banquettes curve around marble-topped tables built for two plates or six. The room looks almost exactly like it did when it opened in 2015 — a proper whiskey lounge and restaurant, confident, warm, and dim, the kind of place built for people who take their spirits seriously.
What’s changed is what’s coming out of the kitchen behind it, and that’s the part worth leaving one's home for.
For its first decade, The Franklin Room built its reputation on that back bar and a menu of sandwich-driven tavern fare — food built to be eaten alongside a whiskey neat, not admired on a plate. Chef Namo Chowcharoen has been in the building since opening night in 2015. He joined as a line cook on opening day, which also happened to be his birthday, a coincidence he still treats as something close to fate. His rise from there was not gentle.
When the pandemic shut The Franklin Room’s doors, Chowcharoen went looking for something else to cook. He spent the pandemic closure working at Union Sushi, one of The Franklin Room’s sister restaurants. He returned when The Franklin Room reopened, coming back convinced the room deserved more than it had been serving.
After the executive chef at The Franklin Room left without warning, Chowcharoen — who had never even held the title of sous chef — was handed the kitchen and told to run it.
“Even in a relatively small space, I knew we could do better,” he says. “Higher quality, higher dining experience.” He steadily built the trust of his kitchen team and elevated the menu, moving well beyond the original tavern fare and sandwiches.
His newest menu debuted July 16; he masterfully built it over the past year. He calls the new menu New American with Global Influences. “This is American food with global influence,” he says — not fusion, a term he avoids on purpose. Fusion, to him, implies blurring of cuisines, but what’s on the menu now is closer to translation, dish by dish, each one built on a technique or ingredient sourced and handled the way its country of origin actually demands. No shortcuts. Every cuisine represented on the menu, he says, carries decades of culture behind it that a substitution would disrespect.
Consider what that looks like on the table. The shareable bar snacks Crispy Larb Winglets ($14) arrive dusted in traditional larb seasoning, with crackling kaffir lime leaves and a yuzu-blue cheese dip — Thai in spirit, bar food in form.
The Beef Tartare appetizer ($21) does more: American in cut, finished with chili crisps and smoked gouda, with pickled shiitake mushrooms doing the work a cornichon usually would.
Main selections include a whole Branzino ($45), dressed not in butter and herbs but in a scallion-soy glaze with lemon caper and rice tajin, a nod to the technique’s Southeast Asian roots. The Coconut Marinated Steak “Bavette” ($38) takes its cue from Thailand as well, its flap steak soaked in coconut milk and finished with a bright tomato salsa. Even the Seafood Ramen ($28, offered as a rotating special) leans global before it leans comforting: a spicy miso tonkotsu broth carries marinated egg and nori alongside more familiar tomato and fennel.
None of the menu items read like a chef showing off his passport stamps. Rather, they showcase a kitchen where the mixing is structural, not decorative — down to tableware Chowcharoen sourced specifically so that each plate visually signals the country it’s pulling from before a guest takes the first bite.
The menu wasn’t built alone, either. Chowcharoen drew dishes out of his own cooks’ backgrounds rather than dictating every plate from the top — a sous chef’s Japanese training shows up on the menu, and so does another cook’s Puerto Rican palate. Longtime regulars won’t be stranded by any of it: the lamb chops, the oysters, the mussels, the dishes with a loyal following from the old menu, are staying put on purpose.
“I want people to know who I am through my food,” Chowcharoen says, and that includes the parts of him that have already been on the menu for a decade.
None of this works without a room built to hold it, and that part has belonged to one person for all ten years. Michael Lacson has run The Franklin Room’s floor since before it had a name, and he has a theory about why the room has lasted a decade in a business where most restaurants don’t.
“If a fork or a knife or a chopstick falls, my team and I know where it is, immediately, and we are on it,” he says — not a boast, more a job description. He calls it the swan theory: guests see the calm surface, never the motion underneath.
Lacson cites famed restaurateur Danny Meyer - founder and executive chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group - as a major influence. Lacson actually traveled to New York to attend one of Meyer's training classes, and he holds Meyer in especially high regard, having toured Meyer’s restaurants, including Gramercy Tavern, before The Franklin Room opened its doors.
The restaurant's spirits program has deepened since the opening: the display case is three hundred bottles deep in bourbon and rye alone, and there is an equally serious collection of mezcal.
The cocktail menu includes inspired specialty cocktails ($18-$22 per cocktail) — The Franklin Room Old Fashioned, built on Angel’s Envy Rye and cherry bark vanilla bitters, and The Beet Queen, a mezcal-and-beet-juice pour finished with pistachio orgeat, among them — and the bar team creates custom off-menu drinks for regulars on request.
Desserts ($5-$12) get the same attention to detail. An Opera cake layers dark chocolate mousse and mascarpone with coffee buttercream and a cocoa crumble; a Mango and Coconut Tart pairs mango sorbet with passion fruit mousse and toasted coconut. For something lighter, a rotating sorbet and gelato selection — raspberry-mango, strawberry lychee-red wine, dark chocolate, salted caramel — closes the meal without weighing it down.
Guests looking to linger can pair dessert with a glass from the restaurant’s digestif list, including a 30-year-old tawny port.
Lacson is quick to correct the assumption that whiskey and spirits are the whole story. “They’re both very equal,” he says of food and beverage now. “We provide the space and the hospitality for it.”
What’s opening, in other words, isn’t a new restaurant. It’s the same lower-level room, the same spirits wall, the same GM who has run it since day one — pointed, now, at a kitchen with something to prove. That’s a harder story to tell than a grand opening, and a better one to eat through.
Chowcharoen has already spent ten years demonstrating he isn’t going anywhere; this menu is what he’s been building toward the whole time.
About The Franklin Room
Located in Chicago’s River North neighborhood at 675 N. Franklin St., The Franklin Room is a lower-level whiskey and spirits lounge and dining room led by general manager Michael Lacson and chef Namo Chowcharoen. Open since 2015, the restaurant is known for one of the most extensive spirits collections in Chicago alongside a New American menu built on global influences.
Address: 675 N Franklin St., Chicago, IL 60654
Telephone: 312-445-4686
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://franklinroom.com
Reservations: https://franklinroom.com/reservations or OpenTable
Hours: Sunday – Monday, closed. Tuesday – Thursday, 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm. Friday – Saturday, 5:00 pm – 11:00 pm.
Private Events
The Franklin Room offers a variety of options for private events, both large and small. The entire restaurant is available for private and semi-private celebrations for groups of up to 100 guests. The back dining area is appointed especially for semi-private gatherings, and the front bar area is ideal for cocktail-style receptions. Whatever the purpose or scale of your event, there’s a spot for it. Learn more at franklinroom.com/private-events.
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drinkatfranklin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/franklinroomchicago
Media Contact
Kurman Communications, LLC — Public Relations | Marketing | Special Events | Social Media. Chicago, IL 60625. Telephone: 312.651.9000.
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675 N. Franklin St., Chicago IL 60654
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