Photo by faze photography. 

Joshua Marrelli will be the executive chef at Wicker Park's Chicago Chop Shop. 

Chicago Chop Shop (2033 W. North Ave., no phone yet), the opening-soon Wicker Park Cerberus whose three heads are a restaurant, a butcher shop, and a performance venue, appointed Joshua Marrelli (Epic, Urban Union) as its executive chef. He revealed a few items from the menu of what he described as “simple, rustic-style food” and “everyday classics”:

• A salad-ish dish of poached and grilled peaches, plums, and apricots with pickled shallots, greens, and spiced nuts

• BLT with heirloom tomatoes dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and sea salt, avocado wedges, bacon vinaigrette, and crispy bacon bits

• Butcher burger, ground in-house from scraps, with aged cheddar, caramelized red onion, and signature burger sauce on a ciabatta bun.

• Meatballs, made from a family recipe from the Minelli clan, who will run the butcher shop. Served on creamy polenta with San Marzano tomato–pork sauce.

• New York strip steak sandwich, with cheese, mushrooms, bordelaise sauce, and bone marrow butter

• Wild salmon with asparagus, citrus beurre blanc, and shaved fennel. “That’s one of the things we are talking about for opening,” Marrelli says.

Marrelli says they now hope to open in early August, so they should be starting the aging process on their first steaks right about now.