For years, the unspoken rule for serious dining in the northwest suburbs was simple: if the occasion warranted a reservation, you drove toward the city. The Arboretum of South Barrington had the anchors you'd expect — Cooper's Hawk, Ruth's Chris, a cinema — but nothing that made a Chicago transplant stop reaching for the Metra schedule. That calculus has shifted, and it shifted fast. Five restaurant and entertainment concepts opened at The Arboretum between October 2024 and January 2026. The operators behind them are not suburban second-acts. They are Chicago hospitality veterans, and at least one of them was already your neighbor.
How a Distressed Asset Became a Dining Destination
The Arboretum's path to this moment was not inevitable. The 600,000-square-foot open-air center defaulted on its construction loan, went through foreclosure, and changed hands twice before Hoffman Estates-based Heidner Properties acquired it in 2022. What Heidner did with the asset matters more than the acquisition itself: rather than filling vacancies with national chains, the new ownership recruited operators with real culinary reputations and, in some cases, real ties to the community.
By August 2024, the Daily Herald was reporting that four restaurants were set to open within months. General Manager Cory Born noted that tenant demand and occupancy were both rising. That's the landlord's version of the story. The more interesting version belongs to the chefs.
The Operator Who Was Already Here
Fabio Viviani needs no introduction to anyone who watches the Food Network, but the detail that changes the meaning of his South Barrington restaurant is not his television résumé. Viviani and his family live in the area. Giostra is not a suburban outpost of a Chicago brand. It is a neighborhood restaurant that happens to be run by one of the more recognizable names in American Italian cooking.
Named for the carousel in the Piazza della Repubblica in Viviani's hometown of Florence, Giostra opened October 14, 2024 with a ribbon-cutting attended by South Barrington Mayor Paula McCombie, Heidner Properties ownership, and the Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce. The menu draws on family recipes: handmade squash ravioli, braised pork ossobuco, a seafood soup built from manila clams, PEI mussels, shrimp, calamari, and rockfish. The wine list, assembled by Beverage Director Fabrizio Di Rienzo, was designed as one of the most comprehensive Italian selections in Chicagoland. You can debate whether it lives up to that claim. You cannot debate that the chef eating at the table next to you might be the one who wrote the recipes.
The Chicago Pedigree Behind The Greggory
If Giostra's local ownership angle is the most interesting story about Viviani's restaurant, the most interesting story about The Greggory is what the partners walked away from to open it.
Gregg Horan spent his career as managing partner at Gibsons Restaurant Group. Bill Veremis built his reputation as managing partner at Rosewood Restaurant. Executive Chef Jose Sosa came from Gibsons Italia. These are not operators looking for an easier market. They chose a 10,000-square-foot standalone building at the Arboretum for their first independent venture, with a kitchen anchored by live-fire cooking and a menu of prime beef, fresh seafood, and handmade pastas.
The Greggory opened in March 2025. By September of that year it had added Saturday brunch service under Sosa, including a format called the Big Baller Brunch built around a 32-ounce Wagyu Tomahawk. Whether that particular item is your speed is beside the point. The Greggory's 2026 Wine Dinner Series, pairing the kitchen with Napa Valley winemakers, is the kind of programming that used to require a River North address.
Two More Reasons to Stay on This Side of the Tollway
Tangled Roots Craft Beer & Kitchen opened January 22, 2025, in the southwest corner of the Arboretum, in a space it completely rebuilt from the prior tenant. It is the fifth location for the Ottawa-based craft brewery, with previous outposts in Vernon Hills, Glenview, and Lockport. The roughly 4,500-square-foot space offers the kind of casual evening that anchors a neighborhood in a way a steakhouse cannot: craft beer on tap, a chef-driven kitchen menu, and a room where you can linger without a reservation.
Higgy's Bar & Grill opened around the same time, rounding out what was effectively a four-concept opening wave in early 2025. The result is that the Arboretum now covers a full spectrum of evenings, from a date-night tasting menu at Giostra to a Tuesday beer and a burger at Tangled Roots, without requiring anyone to leave the zip code.
The Entertainment Side of the Equation
Pinstripes filed for bankruptcy in 2024, closing ten of its eighteen locations and eventually exiting South Barrington as well. The space it left behind — bowling, bocce, a full bar and restaurant — was almost purpose-built for a replacement.
810 Entertainment opened January 22, 2026, making the Arboretum location the company's sixteenth venue and its first in the Midwest. The footprint includes 20 bowling lanes, three indoor bocce courts, billiards, krazy darts, sport simulators, and a feature called VERSE, an immersive augmented reality experience. Location owner Andrew Dealy described the opening as an opportunity to connect with surrounding communities through events and accessible entertainment. The Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce has 810 listed as a member serving Barrington, South Barrington, Deer Park, Inverness, Kildeer, Long Grove, and Tower Lakes. An Easter Bunny Brunch is already on the calendar for April 5, 2026.
The Event That Was Already Here
One thing that predates all of this and deserves mention alongside it: the Wickstrom Concert Series, which runs every Wednesday evening at 6:30 from June through mid-August on The Arboretum's Main Street Plaza. The 2025 series drew roughly 3,000 people per Wednesday, with tribute and cover bands drawn from across Chicagoland. It is free, it is outdoors, and it is one of the better-kept secrets about living in this part of the northwest suburbs — or it was, before it started pulling crowds that size.
The concerts are sponsored by the Village of South Barrington and supported by Rick Heidner personally. Volunteer organizations including Shelter Inc. and animal rescue groups BAARK Dog Rescue and Helping Paws have joined as partners. The lineup for summer 2026 has not been announced as of this writing, but the series has run consecutively and there is no indication it will not return.
What This Means for South Barrington Residents
The argument is not that every new concept at the Arboretum is perfect. Early reviews of Giostra noted reservation chaos on opening night, which is the predictable cost of a high-demand opening. The Greggory's initial reviews called it solid without being exceptional, which is where most new restaurants start before they find their footing.
The argument is structural. Five serious concepts opened here in fifteen months. The operators behind them include alumni of Gibsons, Rosewood, and Gibsons Italia. The celebrity chef behind one of them already coaches his kids' soccer games in this community, or something close to it. The entertainment venue replacing Pinstripes brought a format that has proven itself in fifteen other markets.
South Barrington still has L.L. Bean's first Midwest store, Star Cinema Grill, and a lineup of established dining anchors. What it has now, in addition to those, is a critical mass of newer concepts serious enough to make the decision to stay local an easy one.
If you live in South Barrington and you're thinking about what your home is worth in a market that keeps adding reasons to stay, Morrison Home Team has the local knowledge to give you a clear answer. Request your free home valuation and connect with a team that has been working this market for years.