Eddie Lakin, the owner of the much-written-about Edzo’s Burger Shop, said the restaurant will close permanently after being open for business in Evanston for 15 years.
Lakin said Edzo’s, located at 1571 Sherman Ave, Evanston, has seen a decline in customers going back to at least 2020. He said Evanston’s downtown office commuters never returned after the COVID-19 pandemic and that the business has been losing money since then. Lakin said he planned to close the Sherman Avenue location for good on Dec. 21 or until food runs out.
Since posting on Facebook on Dec. 18 that the restaurant would close, Lakin said Edzo’s saw a boom in business, a stark contrast to the last four slow years, which also reduced the business’s staff.
“All of a sudden, we’re doing like three times, four times our normal business,” Lakin told Pioneer Press. “It’s been taking longer to get the food out to people. We’ve had to turn a lot of people away, and we’ve closed early both of the nights since I announced it.”
In 2019, former Chicago Tribune Food Writer Nick Kindelsperger included Edzo’s among the Top 20 burgers in the Chicago suburbs.
“No place in the Chicago suburbs executes the classic American cheeseburger as flawlessly as Edzo’s,” Kindelsperger wrote. “There are no tricks or needlessly fancy additions. You can just tell that owner Eddie Lakin thought through all the details.”
According to Lakin, Edzo’s also had two locations in Chicago at one point. The Lincoln Park location was open from 2012 to 2014, and a location at a food hall near Washington and State Streets was in business in 2022.
Lakin said he is looking at possibilities to re-open Edzo’s, perhaps in another location in the northern suburbs or in Evanston near his customer base. He mentioned two incoming restaurants in the North Shore area, Smoque BBQ and Hometown Coffee, which will receive a combined $2.25 million in loans from the villages of Glenview and Northbrook, respectively.
“If they (a municipality) want to throw some money at me like that, then I would definitely be willing to entertain the possibility,” he said.
For now, Lakin said he will take a few week off to decompress and reevaluate things. He said his children have now grown, and he will also be an empty nester.
“You start to kind of reassess everything at that point,” he said.
