Junebug Cafe relocating to Milwaukee Ave. at Six Corners, while cafe operators also opening sandwich shop at current location on Irving Park
by BRIAN NADIG
The Junebug Cafes in Portage Park and West Town are being consolidated on Aug. 1 into one new location at 4042 N. Milwaukee Ave., while about a week later the Junebug owners will be opening a new sandwich shop at 4944 W. Irving Park Road, where the first Junebug opened in early 2019.
“Six Corners, Portage Park have been very good to us. We love the area, (and) we just needed a bigger place,” Junebug co-owner Chris Murphy said.
The Junebug on Irving Park is located in an 800-square-foot storefront, while the new location on Milwaukee, once home to Fannie’s Cafe, measures about 1,200 square feet, Murphy said. “We plan to have a few more items, (but) for right now we are just planning to stick to the original menu,” he said.
Junebug specializes in Louisiana-style cooking, as co-owner Jacqueline Mancias-Murphy’s family is from that southern state.
“Her granny’s name was June,” he said. “June was like the matriarch of the family.”
The menu includes beignets, biscuits, gumbo, hand pies, a rice bowl, a po’ boy sandwich and a variety coffee drinks. He added that his wife Jacqueline spent about a year perfecting the cafe’s beignet recipe until she “nailed it.”
The Junebug on Irving Park is being converted to Murphy’s Sandwich Shop Off The Six.
“It’ll be an old-school deli, like pastrami on rye, tuna sandwich, … a few soups,” Murphy said. “We see … the demand for lunch in the area.”
The recent opening of the Clarendale Six Corners senior complex at 4715 W. Irving Park Road and the planned retail-residential development on the former Sears site at 4730 W. Irving Park Road signal a resurgence in the commercial district, said Murphy, who also serves as chairperson of the Six Corners Special Service Area Commission. Prior to Junebug, he helped run his parents’ bar, Poor Phil’s in Oak Park, for six years.
The Junebug at 851 N. Ashland Ave. is scheduled to close on July 31.
