Name: LeTour
Address: 625 Davis Street, Evanston, 60201, US
Price range: $$$

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.

Primary Occasion

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.