Balena's affogato doughnuts with espresso and vanilla gelato

Wood-burning oven . . . house-made pastas . . . a back-to-scratch Italian menu . . . Raise your fork if you’ve heard all this before. But now the plans come from Chris Pandel, the creative chef at The Bristol, and he’s hooking up with the Katz and Boehm machine that brought us Girl & the Goat, GT Fish & Oyster, and Perennial Virant. It’s the kind of alliance for which we’ve prayed, and it’s slated for late January in the ginormous former Landmark space, which has been recast as appropriately rustic. So when Pandel makes nebulous promises about “very, very simply prepared meats and fish” and delivering “kind of New York–style pizza,” we listen. And we wait. 1633 N. Halsted St.; 312-587-1600.

Photograph: Anna Knott