Dave and his kitchen: Dave’s Italian Kitchen serves Evanston for 53 years

Clare Kirwan, Assistant Design Editor

May 21, 2025

Pictures on the wall of Dave’s Italian Kitchen

Dave’s Italian Kitchen has been an Evanston staple for the past 53 years.

Dave Glatt was a 21-year-old college dropout from the suburbs of Chicago who fell in love with the restaurant business after being a pizza shop delivery driver.

He had no money, he wasn’t Italian and he didn’t know how to cook. What he did have was a dream.

In the spring of 1972, a restaurant popped up on 512 Davis St. Glatt had opened Dave’s Italian Kitchen.

A saucy start

Glatt was in his sophomore year at the University of Illinois Chicago in 1970 when the Kent State shootings took place, which sparked widespread student protests and strikes across the U.S. In response, Glatt’s school shut down for three days, and he dropped out shortly after, he said.

Glatt was left with no school and no job, so a friend called and asked if he wanted to deliver for the pizza place where he was working, Glatt said.

“All these lights went up because it’s like, delivering was the first thing I could really do better than anybody else,” Glatt said.

Working at the shop, Glatt met many people his age. One friend was from an Italian family on Chicago’s West Side and encouraged him to start thinking about cooking in the way he loved delivering.

Together, they decided to open a small place on Davis Street, Dave’s Italian Kitchen.

The journey

Glatt’s friend, who was just 17 at the time, decided to return to school shortly after they opened Dave’s, leaving Glatt to run the business alone, he said.

With the little money he had, he bought kitchen equipment and expanded the kitchen in size. With around 10 tables to start, Glatt said he makes ample room for the kitchen to prioritize the quality of the food over their service.

“I call myself Dave’s Italian Kitchen not Dave’s Dining Room,” Glatt wrote on the restaurant’s website. “To this day, I never understand ‘upscale’ restaurants with expensive dining rooms and small kitchens. I still believe that no matter how well-designed the walls are, you can’t eat them.”

In 1975, Dave’s Italian Kitchen moved a few doors down on Davis Street and expanded to 20 tables.

Just three years later, the building was torn up in an urban renewal push, and Dave’s was forced to move to Church Street.

Dave’s stayed put for 22 years at 906 Church St., Glatt said. The building had an upstairs room, which housed employees and hosted parties. He said it was at this location that Dave’s began to perfect some of its signature dishes, like the spaghetti carbonara and the homemade bread.

But the City of Evanston had other plans for the building. The restaurant’s location, which sat nicely between the Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority’s Davis station, made it a desirable buy for the city. Glatt said they bought out Dave’s and paid for its relocation expenses to Chicago Avenue.

Dave’s lasted 16 years at this location, but the dining room, which sat almost 200 people, was too big to sustain, Glatt said.

“It failed gloriously. I kept it going way too long. It was a standard restaurant story: local boy makes bad,” Glatt said.

At this point, Glatt thought he was done with restaurants, he said. At 66 years old, he recalled having no idea what to do with his life.

He was considering moving into a van with his wife and traveling the country, when he came home to an email from an Evanston native.

“He says, ‘I saw that you closed, what can we do to keep you in Evanston?’ I was like, ‘You gotta be joking, I’m done, that’s it’,” Glatt said. “He writes back ‘I’m serious.’”

A new beginning

Glatt told the Evanston resident that he would only give it a go if he found a small place and outside funding. Within hours, Glatt said he wrote back with the number of a landlord that was supportive of the restaurant’s return in his building, regardless of money.

Evanston residents also rallied around Dave’s to support the return of the business. One resident donated an old freezer and equipment. Another old customer donated $5,000. A Facebook post from Glatt generated $30,000 in donations and loans from Evanston residents, Glatt said.

Glatt said he built the restaurant back slowly, taking any extra money they would make in a day to buy shelves, then refrigerators until they were back in business.

Since 2016, Dave’s has sat on Noyes Street, its current location. It’s as small as the original location, seating just 25. The restaurant also doesn’t have enough space to store food, so Glatt shops almost every day, but he enjoys the new challenges that come with his work.

Glatt said they still face the challenges that come with the fluctuations of the market.

“Restaurants mirror society. So everything that America goes through, we do too. In essence, we see the changes first, we’re on the frontline,” Glatt said.

An Evanston staple

Glatt said he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he was “sucked in(to) the restaurant business at 21 years old,” he said.

Dave’s has now been in Evanston for 53 years. Regular customers and staffers come and go, Glatt said, but Dave himself has always remained.

Jeff Dolan, who has been a server for the past year and a half, said that at almost every shift he’s worked he has had a customer share stories of their first date at Dave’s, or memories that occured 40 years ago from the other Dave’s locations.

He said the comfortable and nostalgic environment that the dining room creates for people, carries over to the kitchen.

“It’s a comfortable environment to work in,” Dolan said. “He doesn’t micromanage. He lets us run our shifts, and he’s got a lot of trust in his staff. That’s why I stayed here this long because there’s not another place that I’ve worked for where he just lets you take ownership over the show.”

Elisabeth Montgomery, the first waitress at Dave’s, waited tables throughout most of her high school years. She recalled Glatt creating a welcoming atmosphere, especially when he allowed her to choose the songs on the jukebox.

The man behind the name

Montgomery left Evanston and Dave’s after graduating high school, but stayed close with Glatt. Some employees have stayed working for Glatt for 25-plus years, she said.

Glatt has a natural empathy, Montgomery said, which makes people loyal and devoted to him and the restaurant.

“I would just think of him as the guy who gets up early, makes all the bread, has great staff and then he plays music in the background,” Montgomery said. “After everybody is leaving, he’s there with his guitar, and other people join and sing and have a beautiful time.”

Montgomery now lives in China and is the president of a cross-cultural education organization. During the pandemic, she returned home to Evanston to take care of her mother. She saw Glatt frequently during her return, as her mother, who suffers from dementia, always requested some of Dave’s carbonara pasta.

Their reconnection led Montgomery to an idea: to create a documentary about Glatt and the restaurant.

“I start crying half the time I’m sitting behind the camera and I start crying because the stories are so deep about the effect of the kitchen on people and what happened, and then just hilarious stories that I’ve had on Zoom,” Montgomery said.

The documentary details everything from Glatt’s musical aptitude to his bread-making style. It also details the story of the armed robbery that occurred while Montgomery was working at the restaurant.

Montgomery recalled closing up the restaurant on a Sunday night when a man ran in waving a gun in her face. Glatt ran out saying that they didn’t have a cash register, but that he could look at the silverware drawer.

The man took Glatt to the back, at which point Montgomery called the cops, thinking Glatt would die.

After the man left, Glatt ran back in waving $300, saying he couldn’t believe the man didn’t take it.

“We were all laughing, and then we were crying, and then the cops came in, and he started feeding everybody,” Montgomery said. “That’s what he does. He started feeding them.”

From the late nights to regular Saturday afternoons, Dave’s Italian Kitchen is open, ready to serve warm bowls of pasta and large calzones from 3:30 to 9 p.m. every day of the week.

“I can talk in all these esoteric ways, but at the end of the day, it’s a restaurant. You have a restaurant and you have the work and the guys and you just hope that they’re good and we get to do another day,” Glatt said. “I think that’s the negative about the restaurant industry, is that the best you can hope for is another day.”

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