Millrose Restaurant and Brewing Co. - South Barrington
This is the restaurant that bacon built: In 1924, Louis Arthur Rose (pictured), a North Dakotan who had came to Chicago to work in the stockyards for Armour & Co., founded Rose Packing, then a boning house specializing in beef and pork trimmings for sausage makers. Today, the business, still run by the Rose family, is nationally known for its signature Rose Canadian Bacon and other pork products. Besides its 200,000-square-foot production facility in Chicago, the family firm also runs this restaurant and company store.
Louis Rose's great-grandson, William Rose, who helped found South Barrington in the 1950s, brought company headquarters there in 1973. To house a company store, he moved a 19th-century barn onto the property two years later. Barn moving apparently got to be a habit, because now there are six of them, creating the Millrose restaurant, Rosewood Tavern, banquet rooms, Millrose Country Store and a microbrewery that opened in 1992. Inside the restaurant, you'll find rustic ambiance, high ceilings and working fireplaces.
Look for handcrafted beers and hearty American food, with an emphasis on choice steaks and fresh seafood, plus nightly specials, including a Friday night fish fry. There's a Sunday brunch, too, naturally including eggs benedict made with Rose bacon.
Next door, the Millrose Country Store sells the signature Canadian bacon, honey-glazed hams, sausage, choice beef, microbrew beers, wine and more.
