Moon's will reopen, owner vows

City shuttered longtime restaurant back in July

11/04/2009 10:00 PM

By MICAH MAIDENBERG
Editor

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Moon's Sandwich Shop, 16 S Western
MICAH MAIDENBERG/Staff

Since 1933, Moon’s Sandwich Shop has been dishing up everything from corned beef to breakfast platters on busy Western Avenue, in the first block south of Madison Street.

This summer and fall the restaurant has been quiet, however. In mid-July, the City of Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection closed Moon’s because its retail food license lapsed the previous September, according to Efrat Stein, a department spokesperson. The restaurant also faces violations for opening despite the city order, Stein said.

Owner James Radek is promising he’ll square away the issues with the city and open Moon’s once again.

“It’s a blip, a glitch,” Radek said. “My plans are still to be back. There are a lot of people who came here. They’ve been coming here as many years as I have.”

Radek said he did not manage his license renewal process correctly, but declined to elaborate. He acknowledged he opened the store without the license, saying it was something he felt he needed to do for his employees, who needed work.

The noon hour is often a busy affair at Moon’s, with diners sitting behind a counter ordering food, grillmen sautéing eggs and breakfast meats and waiters and waitresses chatting with customers as they stack the restaurant’s signature corned beef (boiled, served on white bread with mustard, and trimmings) into sandwiches.

“Our corned beef is pretty well known on the West Side,” said Radek, who insisted on meeting for an interview with Chicago Journal at a location other than the restaurant, where customers would be “knocking on the windows” if people were seen inside.

Radek, 59, worked for eight years as a police officer in the Fillmore District, which covered parts of the West Side, in the 1970s.

He met the first owners of Moon’s when visiting for lunch as a beat cop, and bought into the business in 1979. A resident of suburban Park Ridge, Radek became sole proprietor of Moon’s two years ago.

Radek wants to reopen Moon’s because he still needs work — as do his employees.

And he said that after operating a business in the neighborhood for decades, he is eager to witness the area’s next phase. Many of the employees and customers who worked at and patronized Moon’s lived in the Henry Horner Homes and Rockwell Gardens, two public housing developments undergoing redevelopment as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation.

Having Pete’s Fresh Market, the grocery store slated for the southeast corner of Madison and Western, would help his business, Radek said.

Moon’s, he said, “is as much a part of that neighborhood as anything that’s been there.”

Contact: mmaidenberg@chicagojournal.com


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