Minnie Bird now open in Naperville; Roman-style pizza coming soon

Two new restaurant concepts are adding to Naperville’s food scene, with a fried chicken restaurant now open and a Roman-style pizzeria on the way.

Minnie Bird

Minnie Bird opened its doors last week at 1211 E. Ogden Ave. The fast-casual restaurant specializes in fried chicken tenders, sandwiches, wraps and dirty sodas, which use soda as the base and then add things like boba, cream and cold-foam. Each Minnie Bird meal includes free soft serve ice cream.

To celebrate their opening, Minnie Bird will be giving away free combo meals from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday, March 10, or until supplies run out.

Minnie Bird opened its first restaurant in Schaumburg in October 2024 followed by a second store in Oak Brook last year and now Naperville as its third. The business is a partnership with restaurant group Venture Kitchen and Sean Thomas, grandson of Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas.

“The name and the brand is sort of an homage to Minnie, this matriarchal character in the family,” said Stephanie Simpson, a partner with Venture Kitchen, referring to Sean Thomas’ great-great-grandmother Minnie Sinclair. She played a big role in raising Dave Thomas and influenced him to go into the restaurant industry.

“Her personality, which we’re trying to capture, is strong but warm and welcoming and maybe like a little bit of a hint of mischief,” Simpson said. “I think she kind of played a pretty important role in the family going into the restaurant business, and Dave Thomas becoming who he became and so on with Sean. So she’s sort of been a real motivating figure in the family.”

Two of Venture Kitchen’s partners and founders of Minnie Bird, Franklin Buchanan and David Sloan, started Naf Naf Grill in Naperville, Simpson said. The pair’s familiarity with the city influenced them to bring Minnie Bird to the city.

“The best thing about Minnie Bird is it’s highly, highly customizable,” Simpson said.

That customization includes everything from dirty sodas to spice levels in the fried chicken. On top of that, the restaurant has rotating soft serve, sauce and dirty soda flavors. For March, they’re offering shamrock mint-flavored soft serve, jalapeño ranch sauce and three different St. Patrick’s Day-themed dirty sodas.

Minnie Bird is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 11 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Bonci

Popular Chicago pizza spot Bonci is bringing pizza al taglio — a Roman-style pizza with an airy crust and crispy bottom — to the River District in downtown Naperville.

Taking over the spot of the former Effin Egg, this will be the first Bonci location outside of Chicago. The restaurant is planning a spring opening.

Bonci was started in Rome by renowned pizza maker Gabriele Bonci. He did not invent pizza al taglio, but is known for elevating it with unique flavor combinations.

“They call him the Michelangelo of pizza,” said Malek Touhami, manager for Bonci in Chicago.

Some of his more exotic options, like pizza topped with raw liver or oxtail ragu, are exclusive to Bonci’s Rome location. Other unorthodox flavors, however, made their debut in Chicago, including the octopus pizza and the sausage-and-blueberry.

“We’re very popularly known for our potato mozzarella pizza,” Touhami said. “The ones in Chicago that we have that seem to be pretty popular are our burrata basil, our lemon ricotta and our arrabiata.”

Pizza at Bonci is sold by weight, with each piece being cut with a pair of scissors.

“The customer could ask, ‘Hey, can I just get a slice of, for example, pepperoni?’ And then we will ask them if they want more or less than where the scissor is placed,” Touhami said.

The first Bonci location opened in Chicago’s West Loop in 2017. Since then, two more locations have set up shop in the Lincoln Park and Lakeview neighborhoods.

“Originally, Gabriele is the one who reached out and he wanted to open up a location in the U.S. … He picked Chicago because he felt Chicago was a big hub for pizza, especially at the time in 2017,” Touhami said.

Much of the restaurant’s clientele also comes from the suburbs, which Touhami attributes in part to Bonci’s appearance on the Netflix series “Chef’s Table: Pizza” and the business’ participation in Chicago’s Pizza City Fest.

“We wanted to branch out to the suburbs because we’ve been getting a lot of invitations from customers and recommendations that we should go out there,” he said. “And we really like the Naperville area. Very busy. There’s a lot of tourists coming in and out through there, just the community overall seems like a pretty good demographic for our style of pizza.”

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