Review: There’s no place like home for Soulé, bringing its Creole soul food back to North Lawndale

On the West Side of Chicago, as you head east on Roosevelt Road, downtown spires loom in the distance like the Land of Oz.

Then, just before you hit Douglass Park, comes a curious new building on a barren block, stripped not by a tornado, but decades of disinvestment. Unlike Dorothy’s house, it wasn’t dropped down, but deliberately and beautifully built.

It’s the new home of Soulé. (That’s pronounced, by the way, as in soul meets Beyoncé.)

Chef and owner Bridgette Flagg didn’t just move her Creole-inspired soul food restaurant from a small storefront in Ukrainian Village, where diners lined up out the door for hours. She built a whole new custom home for the business, with a full bar, no less, back in North Lawndale, where it all started with fried catfish plates on Polk Street.

“I don’t like calling myself a chef,” Flagg said. “I’m not formally trained. Chefs have some pretty big shoes to fill.”

To me, though, Flagg is indeed a chef. And Michelin agrees with me for once, first naming Soulé a Bib Gourmand recipient in 2021. Flagg not only fills her chef-sized shoes; they might as well be ruby red slippers.

She opened the new Soulé on New Year’s Day.

“It took less than a year,” Flagg said. “It was a journey, that construction, especially being a woman. That whole year, I did not play.”

She’s become best known for her fried catfish, with good reason. Golden fillets, delicately veiled in a cornmeal-laced crust, cloak pristine flesh within.

“It comes in fresh every day,” Flagg said. “And it’s seasoned with our secret seasoning.”

Her business began with plates of this catfish, two sides, a dinner roll and a soda in 2014.

“I’m from North Lawndale originally,” said the chef. “I started the business selling plates from my childhood home.”

She would post the menu on Instagram, people ordered, then she’d work with her neighbors to make the plates.

Three years later, Flagg opened the first Soulé (currently closed for renovation) in 2017. But she wanted to be in her old neighborhood too.

“My friend told me about this church,” said the chef. She bought the sagging single-story brick building. It collapsed in the middle of construction. “I ended up tearing the entire church down.”

In its place, Soulé was born again. The crisp dark structure opens up in front with floor-to-ceiling windows. Glass garage doors can open fully when weather permits. For now, a long modern fireplace warms the lounge area. A full bar lines the wall alongside. An airy dining room leads up to a mezzanine, with a neon sign radiating the message: Believe in Yourself.

Perhaps it’s a reminder for Flagg herself, whose culinary education began with simple green beans, cooked as tender as her peeled potatoes and childhood memories.

“The green beans were the first dish that I ever learned how to cook,” she said. “My mom taught me how to cook those with smoked turkey necks.”

The chef only started cooking about nine or 10 years ago.

“When my mother and my grandmother were alive, I wasn’t doing any cooking at all,” she said. “It wasn’t until everybody passed away that I wanted to go back my mother’s and my grandmother’s for Sunday dinner.”

But it was too late.

“I tell everybody, you gotta take time to make time, before you run out of time,” Flagg said. “And I ran out of time.”

The only dish she remembered how to make was the green beans.

“I would go to J & J’s or a chicken shack and buy a pan of chicken or a pan of fish,” said the chef. “But I would always cook these green beans, because it was the only thing that I knew how to cook.”

Now Flagg cooks so much more — including the fan-favorite side dish, chicken spaghetti. It’s not Italian, but a delightful Southern cousin to macaroni and cheese.

“You have Ro-Tel tomatoes. You have cheese. You have chicken breasts,” said the chef. “It’s not your traditional spaghetti with marinara sauce.”

Fantastic fried green tomatoes, also slipped in cornmeal batter, get finished with a spice-forward rémoulade. That same vibrant sauce tops a catfish po’boy with a fillet so generous, you’ll barely be able to close the bread — much less your mouth — around it. Not one, but two catfish fillets perch on top of a huge bowl of grits, served with a creamy garlic sauce that ends the debate over sweet or savory before it even starts.

Do note the blackened catfish, on the menu and previously made at the original location, was not available when I visited.

The phenomenal fried chicken has made the move, along with house-made hot honey, which you can order on the side to drizzle or dip at your leisure. I highly recommend sides of dirty rice, infused with delicious morsels; and mixed greens, with collards bathed in precious pot liquor.

With the giddy abundance in the fried catfish and fried chicken dishes, I’m not sure the shrimp dishes offer enough at their price, despite their impressive size, careful cleaning and correct cooking. I have only myself to blame for ordering a side of asparagus so far out of season, but six scrawny spears for $6.50 was still outrageous, as is that pricing for all the sides, which seems uncharacteristically ungenerous.

Dessert made up for the disappointment, with a bright banana pudding and classic peach cobbler.

“My sister’s the baker, and I’m the cook of the family,” said Flagg, who does make the cobbler. Otherwise, her sister, Shaneka Fields, makes the desserts from scratch, including a lovely double butter pound cake with rum caramel sauce, served with vanilla ice cream.

The new bar offers signature cocktails, many named for family, but the signature nonalcoholic Soulé punch remains the most popular drink and is made with a meaningful ingredient.

“It’s a mixture of Kool-Aid, lemonade and tea,” Flagg said.

With all of their scratch ingredients, why use Kool-Aid?

“In the African American community, Kool-Aid is essential,” said the chef, laughing. “We have Kool-Aid connoisseurs. Everybody can’t make Kool-Aid, but you got some people that know how to really, really make Kool-Aid.”

They use granulated sugar. A lot of sugar.

“The sugar plays a big part,” she added. “The sweeter it is, the better it is.”

The punch made even my sweet tooth ache, but it’s refreshingly balanced when made into the Soulé Punch cocktail, mixed with Grey Goose vodka, garnished with a fresh orchid.

“My people deserve luxury,” Flagg said. “Maybe other people will follow, and eventually we’ll be like Ukrainian Village and have a bunch of small businesses up and down Roosevelt.”

For now, if you head west on Roosevelt Road, Soulé stands alone. People thank her for coming to the neighborhood, she said.

“I’m like, I’m from over here too,” Flagg said. “I worked at the McDonald’s on Roosevelt and Kedzie for years. I graduated from Collins (Academy) High School. I went to Daniel Webster Elementary School.”

“I prayed about it, and didn’t have a bad feeling in my body when it came down to putting in the restaurant,” she added. “I had so many people trying to deter me.”

She refused to listen.

“People really want this,” she said. “We need this.”

And she knows why too.

There’s no place like home.

Soulé

3615 W. Roosevelt Road

773-696-9485

soulechicago.com

Open: Dine in 2-9 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday. Takeout 1-8 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday; 1-7 p.m. Friday to Sunday. Closed Monday.

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Prices: Appetizers $10 to $18; entrees $13 to $30; drinks $3.50 to $18

Noise: Conversation-friendly

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level

Tribune rating: Very good to excellent, 2½ stars

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.

lchu@chicagotribune.com

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