Lake Forest After Six: How This Summer's Evening Map Quietly Redrew Itself

The bells at First Presbyterian have not moved. The Metra still lets out at Deerpath. What has shifted, quietly and mostly on Thursdays, is where residents actually spend the hours between dinner and dark. For years the honest answer was Ravinia, or south to Highwood, or the back terrace at home. This summer there is a shorter answer, and it stays inside the 60045.

Three things happened between March and June that a resident should read together rather than one at a time: a century-old dining room at Deer Path Inn was replaced, a new Italian kitchen from a familiar North Shore name opened on Western, and the free concert series at Market Square expanded to ten dates with opening acts drawn from local arts groups. Add Elawa Farm's summer calendar, which now runs weekly grill nights on top of the usual Farm Dinner Series, and the town has, for the first time in a while, a full Thursday-to-Saturday evening spine of its own.

The Thursday Anchor

Concerts in the Square is the load-bearing beam. Every Thursday from mid-June through mid-August, free concerts start at 6:30 p.m., sponsored by Lake Forest Bank & Trust, and the 2026 lineup is unusually deep. Eight of the ten dates are in Market Square itself, with the two book-end shows staged at Northcroft and Townline Park.

The genuinely new element this year is the opening-act structure. Several concerts feature opening acts before the headlining performance: a group from Citadel Theatre on July 2, a group from Gorton Center on July 16, and Lake Forest Dance Academy on July 30, highlighting local arts organizations and providing even more entertainment for attendees. July 23 is the sleeper date, when the Market Square Car Show shares the block with the band and the square functions as one long open-air room from about 5 p.m. onward.

The Room That Reset the Dining Question

The bigger story after the concert is where the crowd walks next, and here Deer Path Inn has done something worth paying attention to. The Brasserie, now open at The Deer Path Inn in Lake Forest, took over the space known for nearly a century as The English Room, in what the hotel described as a "thoughtful evolution of one of the inn's most storied dining venues."

For anyone who has ordered a Manhattan in the English Room across the last thirty years, the shift is more than cosmetic. Photos of the new, brighter space show brass accents, smaller marble-topped tables and "rich banquette" seating. A custom pewter bar crafted by Mitchell & Mitchell anchors the room as a gathering point for drinks and conversation. The art program is the surprise. More than 70 works from British and Chicago-based artists are displayed salon-style throughout the room, including The Blue Guitar by David Hockney alongside works by contemporary British artist David Shrigley.

The menu deliberately does not throw away the old audience. Chilled oysters, seafood towers and large-format herb-crusted lamb meant for sharing are served alongside grass-fed steaks and dishes like flounder meunière and a dry-aged burger, with a nod to British comfort food in the form of onion soup enriched with oxtail and a sticky toffee pudding to finish. Hours matter as much as the food: The Brasserie is open starting at 6 a.m. Monday through Friday and 6:30 a.m. on the weekends through 10 p.m., serving breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, drinks and dessert. That is a longer service day than the English Room ever ran, and it changes what a Wednesday morning or a post-concert Thursday looks like on Illinois Road.

Where Else the Evening Has Moved

Two other rooms deserve to be on the map before Labor Day.

The first is Follia, on the west side of town at 950 N Western Avenue. Bruno Abate, who opened his first Follia in the Meatpacking District and later launched Tocco in Winnetka, brings the Follia name back with a new location in Lake Forest. Anyone who has driven to Winnetka for Tocco on a Friday night will understand why the shorter drive matters. Service runs Tuesday through Sunday, 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. weeknights and until 10:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and the courtyard patio is the seat to ask for on a warm evening.

The second is Little Tails Sports Bar & Grill, which quietly filled a gap on the south end of town. It sits at 840 S. Waukegan Road in the center where Starbucks is located, just down the street from Citadel Theater and Lake Forest Hospital. Its lunch conceit is the kind of thing residents notice before critics do: a limited menu of 11 items, at a cost of $11 each, served in 11 minutes. For a household juggling a hospital appointment, a rehearsal at Citadel, and a summer schedule, that math is the point.

Elawa's Second Season

Elawa Farm, on Middlefork Drive, is the piece that lets a Lake Forest evening feel unlike anywhere else on the North Shore. The farm has always run classes and a market, but the 2026 summer calendar leans harder on dinner than it has in past years. A partial view of what is actually on the books:

• Summer Grill Night, weekly, described as a weekly outdoor dinner celebrating the best of the season, grilled to order over a charcoal fire, with a new menu each week that is sometimes rustic, sometimes refined, always lively; backyard BBQ meets open-air supper club.
• Burger Night, family-friendly and community-minded: each week features a new signature charcoal-grilled burger, seasonal sides, and a buffet of homemade desserts, and for every ticket purchased, one serving of ground beef is donated to families supported by North Chicago Community Partners.
• Golden Hour, the July Farm Dinner, featuring a seasonal family-style menu inspired by the farm's freshest harvest, with golden sunset views across the property.
• Peaches & Provisions, the August Farm Dinner, set in the heart of the Courtyard and highlighting sun-ripened peaches, peak-season produce, and ingredients sourced from the gardens and trusted farm partners.
• Garden Yoga in the restored gardens, on multiple dates between July 18 and August 29, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., $27 per ticket.
• An America 250 farm dinner co-hosted with the City, celebrating America's 250th anniversary with refined Americana cuisine and live outdoor cooking by Chef Lee Kuebler.

For guests without a reserved parking pass, Elawa asks that you park at St. James Lutheran Church at 1380 N. Waukegan Road, just three blocks north of the farm. It is a small logistical note, but the first time you try to drop in on a sold-out Grill Night you will wish someone had told you.

How to Stack a Weekend

Put the pieces together and a working Lake Forest weekend in late July looks like this. Thursday at 6:30 the square fills for Roger That and the car show, and you either walk the aisles of Model As or claim a bench and eat something from one of the Bank Lane storefronts. Friday evening you have a table at Follia or Brasserie, depending on whether you want handmade pasta or oysters under a Hockney. Saturday you take the 9 a.m. yoga class in Elawa's garden, pick up produce from the farm's summer Friday and Saturday market with fresh produce and baked items, and come back at six for Summer Grill Night. Sunday morning you walk Middlefork Savanna from the same parking lot, then read the paper on the Brasserie's banquette.

Not a single mile of that itinerary requires the tollway.

A Note from LFC Partners

Neighborhoods do not stand still, and the version of Lake Forest that made sense five summers ago is not quite the one on offer this July. A dining room that ran unchanged for a century has been rebuilt. A concert series that used to be a handful of Thursdays now anchors ten weeks. A farm that used to sell tomatoes on Saturday morning now runs a full evening service. If you own a home here, this is the texture that shows up in a private showing and in a buyer's first drive down Deerpath.

When the time comes to think about the value of that texture in your own address, Ann Lyon, LFC Partners is available for a complimentary home valuation and private consultation. We would rather have that conversation over a slow coffee than a rushed one, and we know the quiet tables where it happens.