Allez Café

The breakfast sandwich is the reason people come: hashbrown cake, thick-cut bacon glazed in jalapeño jam, steamed egg and wild ramp aioli on a Martin’s potato roll.

Coffee, matcha and cold drinks

The beverage program centers on specialty coffee, with a full espresso bar and Backlot Coffee as the café’s roasting partner. House-made syrups and Kilgus Farms milk go into the drinks, and the standing espresso orders are the simple ones: an Americano, an oat-milk latte.

The cold side has more personality. Nitro Matcha Latte, Nitro Cold Brew and iced tea cover it, with Cream Top as the signature addition. The same thinking travels beyond the room: Allez runs a full-service espresso cart and beverage bar for private events through Ambrosia Foods.

A small Bucktown room with a fine-dining backbone

Allez is a casual neighborhood café with a serious kitchen behind it. Its founders came out of Chicago fine dining, with Alinea and Blackbird in their background, and they built the place around the idea of guests putting the laptop down for well-made coffee and pastry, and for local-chef pop-up dinners after hours.

The room is compact and modernized-retro, fun and comforting, with a salmon color palette. Expect a busy small-format café and a focused menu, where the order is a drink, a pastry, or the breakfast sandwich, and often all three at once. Day to day the draw is straightforward: a neighborhood counter, specialty drinks, house-made baked goods and chef-driven morning food.

Order the breakfast sandwich, then add something baked

The breakfast sandwich is the signature and the main attraction: a crispy hashbrown cake, thick-cut bacon glazed in jalapeño jam, steamed egg and wild ramp aioli on a Martin’s potato roll. A second version runs an egg patty with Gouda, house-made hashbrown, bacon, onion aioli and jalapeño jam on the same roll. Either way the structure holds: soft roll, egg, bacon, hashbrown crunch, richness from cheese or aioli, and heat and sweetness from the jam.

Then add pastry. The baking happens in Ambrosia’s kitchen next door, which turns out doughnuts, crullers that draw their own attention, seasonal baked goods and a flaky almond croissant. The best order is the sandwich, then a doughnut or a cruller, with Cream Top, Nitro Matcha Latte, Nitro Cold Brew, an Americano or an oat-milk latte beside it.