Layla & Ringo’s

The counter at Layla & Ringo’s does two jobs at once: coffee and a breakfast sandwich on one side, shelves of grocery-style goods on the other. The Chicago café calls itself a modern bodega, and that is the most useful way to read it.

A modern bodega with a coffee counter

Layla & Ringo’s opened in early 2025 from Episcope Hospitality, in the North Union development on the Moody Bible Institute campus. It is one of two Episcope rooms in the same project: this one holds the daytime café and market, while DJ’s Great Room takes the evening restaurant and bar.

The coffee is built for use rather than for study. The Daily Brew anchors it, with espresso-style drinks alongside, and the counter is organised so a cup can be picked up on its own or added to a sandwich order. It is a morning coffee, a midday cup, or the one you drink while you answer email, and it suits the bodega framing, where the drinks counter supports the wider mix of café, market and neighbourhood errand.

A daytime stop with a market attached

The room is set up for people moving through North Union, River North, Old Town, the Gold Coast and the Moody campus. There is wifi and space to settle in with a coffee, a sandwich or a pastry, which makes it as much a working room as a quick stop.

The market side is what widens the visit. You can browse curated retail and grocery-style goods in the same space where you order breakfast or lunch, and the service model follows the bodega idea: order at the counter, take it away or stay. It is designed less like a dining room than like a neighbourhood anchor built for repeat daily use.

Order the Daily Brew and a breakfast sandwich

The most grounded order starts with the Daily Brew and adds the food that defines the daytime menu. Breakfast sandwiches are central; the BLT is the named lunch choice; pastries fill the gap between the two.

The food is classic and direct rather than chef-driven: coffee, breakfast sandwiches, BLTs, pastries and market goods, which is exactly what separates this from a conventional coffee bar. It works as somewhere to pick up a brewed coffee and a pastry, stay on the wifi for part of the day, or make a simple breakfast or lunch stop inside the larger North Union development.