Mustard's Last Stand has been next door to Northwestern's football stadium for 57 years. On Oct. 2, when the new Ryan Field opened, the hot dog stand sold food inside the stadium for the first time. "We've been next door for 57 years, so it's an honor to be in here," Michelle Starkman, wife of co-owner Lonnie Starkman, told The Daily Northwestern.
Mustard's is one of nine local restaurants cooking at the $875 million, 35,000-seat stadium this season. The stadium calls the program "Evanston and North Shore Favorites," and it's set up to give fans a taste. You get a short menu, only at home games and other stadium events, paid by card, and the lineup can change from one event to the next. Each restaurant's full kitchen is somewhere else, on Green Bay Road, Payne Street, Davis Street, Church Street, Ashland Avenue, Central Street and Wilmette's Greenleaf Avenue. That's where you'll find these restaurants most of the year.
How a Neighborhood Kitchen Got a Stadium Stand
In July, the Ryan Field Foundation started taking applications from local restaurants that wanted to run pop-up stands at games and events. Levy Restaurants, the stadium's hospitality partner, ran the selection. Its application asked restaurants to describe times they had kept service quality high with long lines out the door.
The stadium's own FAQ for the program shows how demanding the selection was. Levy looked at cook time from start to finish, whether food could be made off-site and brought in, how food stayed at safe temperatures in transit, and whether a business had the cash and staff to handle back-to-back events. One criterion was simply "established reputation and local customer following."
The restaurants that got in run their stands themselves. Each one brings its own staff, transportation, storage and food prep. Levy and the restaurant agree on menu, packaging and prices together, and every sale goes through a handheld point-of-sale device that Levy provides. Levy also collects the sales tax and covers the card fees. The FAQ also says vendors will rotate, so "not every vendor will be needed at every event." In practice, every stand is a sample of the restaurant, and there's no promise that any given one will be open the day you go.
Where Each Stand Sits, and Where the Kitchen Actually Is
The final list, announced the day the stadium opened, has eight Evanston restaurants and one from Wilmette. The Evanston RoundTable's walk through the concourses at homecoming showed which floor each stand was on. Each restaurant's website gives its everyday address.
| Restaurant | Stand inside Ryan Field | Where to find it on non-game days |
|---|---|---|
| Hecky's Barbecue | Ground floor | 1902 Green Bay Road, Evanston |
| Mustard's Last Stand | Ground floor | Next door to the stadium |
| Bluestone | Ground floor | A sports bar in the neighborhood |
| Pizza by Sal | Ground floor | 1133 Greenleaf Ave., Wilmette |
| Double Clutch Brewing Company | Second floor | 2121 Ashland Ave., Evanston |
| The Fat Shallot | Second floor | 2902 Central St., Evanston |
| Spice Jamaican Cuisine | Second floor | 1905 Church St., Evanston |
| Soul & Smoke | Moved down from the third floor | 1601 Payne St., Evanston |
| La Cocinita | Moved down from the third floor | 521 Davis St., Evanston |
The last two rows got a mid-season fix. At homecoming, Soul & Smoke and La Cocinita were on the third floor, and the RoundTable's reviewer said that floor was sparsely populated and that "the difference in business is stark." By the Evanston Township High School vs. New Trier game on Oct. 16, both had been moved to lower floors, according to the RoundTable's Oct. 22 update.
The storefronts in the table are far apart. Hecky's has been at its Green Bay Road corner since 1983. Soul & Smoke's Payne Street restaurant is the Evanston location of a group that also has restaurants in Avondale and the West Loop. La Cocinita's Davis Street location has a sister restaurant in New Orleans. Spice, on Church Street, serves dishes like Rasta Pasta, brown-stew chicken and fried fritters, according to the RoundTable's 2026 guide to Black-owned restaurants. Of the addresses in the table, only Mustard's, next door to the stadium, and The Fat Shallot, at 2902 Central St., are on Central Street.
The Stadium Version Is the Short Menu
The local stands sell a limited menu, posted under each restaurant's sign. At homecoming, a pulled pork sandwich at the Hecky's booth was $13.99.
That price makes more sense next to the stadium's other food. "The Village," on the northwest plaza between Gates 1 and 2, is a row of six pavilions from big-name Chicago chefs. There, Goatdown's cheesesteak from Stephanie Izard was $17.99, Publican Meats' patty melt was $18.99, and Gibsons Tavern's mini lobster roll was $24.99. Levy's own Best of Chicago Eats stands sold Al's Italian beef for $17.99. Supply was another issue. Two hours into the homecoming game, Publican Meats was down to two items.
The local stands are among the more affordable meals in the building, but they're still a sample. The full menus are back at the restaurants. Bluestone owner Patrick Fowler told The Daily Northwestern that opening night brought in regulars and "new customers who are asking where we're located, where they can come visit us." Fowler's grandfather played football in the same stadium. Mary Keating, a Northwestern graduate at the opener, told the paper she hoped fans would "get something here at the stadium and then go to the actual physical restaurant."
Nov. 28 Is the Last Home Game of the Season
The Wildcats' last home game this year is Nov. 28 against Illinois. It's Senior Day, and it falls on Thanksgiving weekend. After that, the stands won't open again until the next event, and public concerts are expected to start sometime in 2027. If you want to get to the storefronts in the table that weekend, you'll be dealing with the game-day traffic plan that the RoundTable laid out before opening night:
- Street parking ban. Parking isn't allowed on either side of Central Street between Poplar and Girard avenues, or on Isabella Street and Lincoln Street between Poplar and Ridge Avenue. The ban starts five hours before kickoff and lasts until event traffic clears, and parked cars are towed.
- Permit-only streets. In the area bounded by the North Shore Channel, Isabella Street and the Metra tracks, street parking is for residents with permits from two hours before the game until one hour after. The fine is $125.
- Ashland Avenue. Between Lincoln and Central, Ashland becomes one-way northbound for shuttles and local traffic only, which reverses its normal direction. Double Clutch's taproom is on Ashland.
- Downtown shuttle loop. Game-day shuttles run from downtown garages at 1800 Maple Ave., 525 Church St. and 821 Davis St. They stop at Church and Chicago, Davis and Orrington, and University Place and Maple. La Cocinita on Davis and Spice on Church are both on streets the loop uses.
- After the game. Extra Metra UP-North and CTA Purple Line trains handle the crowd leaving, and the only authorized rideshare pickup is the Haven Middle School lot at 2417 Prairie Ave.
The City of Evanston's game-day parking page says these details can change. Check it, along with Northwestern's schedule, the week of the game.
Before That, a Saturday on Central With No Game
This Saturday, Nov. 14, Central Street has a busy day with no football. The Central Street business district's Holiday Stroll and Tree Lighting runs all day, with shopping and dining specials, free trolley rides and pop-up entertainment. The tree lighting is at 5 p.m. in Independence Park. With no game, the parking ban isn't in effect, so The Fat Shallot at 2902 Central St. and the rest of the corridor are easy to reach. If you've only had these restaurants from a concourse stand, Saturday is a good time to visit one in person.
Over 32 years in Chicagoland real estate, we've found that the best way to know a neighborhood is to know its restaurants by address, not by their stadium stand. If you're thinking about life near Central Street or anywhere else in Evanston, Chaz Walters can walk you through what game days and every other day really look like on the blocks you're considering. Let's Connect.
