Lincoln Park Cookie Bar Reopening Nearby as Gluten-Free Bakery

Imagine having an intense, chocolatey cake with chocolate ganache. Now imagine that same cake with less sugar and than the average option.

That’s the aim of the Chocolate Black-Out Cake, just one of many desserts from a former Lincoln Park bakery that hopes to land soon in a new space on the North Side. Pending city approval, Cookie Bar will reopen at 1746 W. Wilson Ave. in Ravenswood. And it will have a new twist.

In 2010, Jeff Steinberg and co-owner Joe Bova opened Cookie Bar in Lincoln Park at 2475 N. Lincoln Ave., near DePaul University. Its last day open there was Dec. 22, 2012, but owners promised a new location in the works.

"Stay tuned for news of our grand reopening in our new space," they posted on their Facebook page at the end of December.

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Cookie Bar's storefront may only be a couple years old, but Bova and Steinberg are no strangers to the sweet life. Prior to the Lincoln Park opening, burger lovers may have sampled the shop's chocolate chip cookies at Lake View's DMK Burger Bar.

Cakes, pumpkin bread, brownies and of course, cookies, will be available at the Ravenswood full-service bakery, Steinberg said. Gluten and dairy-free goods are on the business' current menu, but because of such a high demand, the new Cookie Bar will be entirely gluten-free.

“We’ve done gluten-free and vegan selections from the start, but they’ve just become more popular,” Steinberg said. “We decided to reconfigure and open as a gluten-free bakery.”

Cookie Bar uses its own blend of flours like amaranth and quinoa, Steinberg said. While many gluten-free places use potato starch that can make desserts heavy, the higher protein flours create a similar texture to cakes that include gluten.

The new Ravenswood location will be three times the size of the Lincoln Park bakery.