The Restaurant
LeTour opened in 2022 at 625 Davis Street — three blocks east of the Davis Metra and Purple Line stop in downtown Evanston — under Amy Morton (daughter of Arnie Morton, founder of Morton's of Chicago, and proprietor of the long-running Found Kitchen group that defined the city's farm-to-table movement for a decade). The dining room is built into a wide, airy double-height storefront with floor-to-ceiling windows facing Davis Street, exposed brickwork, a long zinc bar along the south wall, and a back dining floor that seats about ninety. The format is deliberately flexible: a cocktail bar by 4pm, a dining room by 7pm, an event space by 10pm — and the staff transitions the room through the three formats without breaking the evening's atmosphere.
The kitchen serves a contemporary French-Moroccan menu that draws on Morton's family-trained French foundation and a deliberate North-African pivot toward the eastern-Mediterranean spice repertoire. Signature plates include the lamb tagine with preserved-lemon couscous and harissa-roasted carrots; a Moroccan-spiced branzino with charred lemon and fennel pollen; the steak frites with a green-peppercorn jus that runs as the working LeTour signature; a North-African chicken-and-olive prep that the dinner regulars order without reading the menu; and a shareable mezze board with house-made hummus, roasted red-pepper muhammara, smoked baba ghanoush and warm flatbread. The cocktail programme is the room's second credential — a deliberate Moroccan-rose-water-and-orange-blossom Negroni, a saffron Old Fashioned, and a citrus-and-cardamom martini list.
Service is warm and informed: the staff narrates the North-African spice profiles without overselling them, and the by-the-glass wine list — about fifty labels with deliberate French, Spanish and Lebanese depth — pairs into the menu's spice register without requiring a sommelier round. The Davis Street location, three blocks east of the train station, makes the post-dinner Metra-and-Purple Line commute back to the Loop trivial for clients and out-of-town guests. The room's flexible bar-and-dining-room format makes it one of the city's most working team-dinner addresses: a table of fourteen can transition from cocktails at 6pm to a sit-down dinner at 7:30 without the room missing a beat. For an Evanston evening that wants a real chef-driven dining room in a flexible format, LeTour is the city's standing answer.
Why This Is Evanston’s Team Dinner Pick
LeTour is the Evanston team-dinner room because the format does the work the host cannot script. The airy-open Davis Street space transitions from cocktail bar at 6pm to a full sit-down dining room at 7:30pm without breaking the evening's atmosphere — which means a team of twelve arriving in waves doesn't have to wait at the host stand or hold a corner table cold. The mezze-and-shareable-plates section of the menu lets a table order across the board without arguing over a cuisine, and the Moroccan-spice register reads as a careful, deliberate choice rather than the suburban steakhouse default. Amy Morton's hand on the room — the daughter of the Morton's-of-Chicago founder, who has run Evanston dining rooms for fifteen years — reads as continuity that the corporate hospitality group cannot manufacture. The Davis Street location lets out-of-town team members commute back to the Loop or O'Hare without a car. For a Cook County team dinner that needs to register as a real evening rather than a corporate obligation, LeTour is the answer.
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