Lido's Caffè

Lido's Caffe has announced plans to close. Click here to read more ...

Marion Street's reopening in late 2007 made for a sweet new opening in downtown Oak Park months later. “We really love that street. We wouldn’t have opened if we couldn’t get a spot on it,” Louise Mihalik told Wednesday Journal in January 2008.

By August, Louise and friends Jan Louis and Lido Petrucci had transformed 122 N. Marion, which for more than half a century was Abrahamson's Furriers, into Lido’s Caffe, an Italian coffeehouse, sandwich shop and gelato parlor.

Since then, grab-and-go dining, not to mention sit-still sipping and surfing — Lido’s is an Internet café, too — will never be the same in Oak Park.

To and from the Harlem Green Line, before and after a show at the Lake Theatre, and between stops at neighboring boutiques, there’s cannoli for your cappuccino and buccellate for your latte. No wish for caffeine? No problem. For your fresh-squeezed grapefruit or orange juice, there are cookie bites like cherry amaretti and lemon taralli. When you make your own sandwich, grilled cheese can be smoked mozzarella, ham can be Rostello, and you can get both on focaccia.

As specialties abound, what percolates more is hospitality.

The three owners dote over customers as they do on cappuccino and sorbetto. You know seconds after you get to the counter that names of regulars — Bob and Lisa, Mike and Jill, Tim and Madonna — mean as much here as names of suppliers — Lavazza and Fabbri.

Lido’s is the Cheers of espresso bars. Louise welcomes everyone as if they were family. Jan notices changes in ordering habits and worries about the weary. Lido himself keeps a community photo board.

In the build-out of their space, the all-embracing trio worked in a detail to keep the former owner, furrier Marvin Abrahamson, at home in a noshery. The spot opposite the gelato case may be their storage room, but it’s Marvin’s vault.