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Home / Businesses / Parachute HiFi

Parachute HiFi

Avondale · Korean-American/Izakaya Community-sourced, unverified
📍 3500 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60618

Parachute HiFi occupies the exact Elston Avenue space where chefs Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark ran Parachute, their decade-long Korean-American fine-dining restaurant, until its final service on March 23, 2024.

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Vintage 1970s Altec Lansing Model 19 speakers and a 400-album vinyl collection, paired with a tteokbokki pad thai and a cookie-butter fat-washed rye — a Michelin-pedigree kitchen's second act as a listening bar.

Rather than close the space for good, the pair reopened it that same summer as something almost entirely different — a vinyl-centric listening bar built around a pair of vintage 1970s Altec Lansing Model 19 speakers sourced from a Peoria collector and hand-wired by Clark himself, with more vintage speakers lining the room as part-functional, part-ornamental decor. The record collection runs about 400 albums deep, including some once owned by jazz historian Richard Wang, spun from a DJ booth where Clark and guest DJs work through soul, '70s pop, and Korean disco over the course of a night. The food hasn't disappeared, just shifted register — Korean comfort food blended with izakaya and Thai influences, including a tteokbokki pad thai that commits to both halves of that mashup, alongside cocktails like a rye whiskey fat-washed with cookie butter.

Seating runs tight on purpose: six tables and two bar seats take reservations, with the rest held for walk-ins, and the advice for weekends is to show up close to opening if you want a seat without waiting. It's closed Monday and Tuesday, open Wednesday through Sunday evenings only, with the kitchen cutting off an hour before the room does. For a restaurant that already had a Michelin star in its previous life, choosing to become a listening bar instead of chasing a second one says something about what Kim and Clark actually wanted the space to be — and the Altec Lansing speakers currently doing the talking seem like proof it was the right call.

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Specials at Parachute HiFi

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Parachute HiFi

AvondaleCommunity

Hours

Wed-Thu5-11pm
Fri-Sat5pm-12am
Sun5-10pm
closed Mon-Tue (per parachute-hifi.com)
📅 Reservations 🥡 Takeout unconfirmed

Amenities & accessibility

📅Reservations accepted
❔Takeout: unverified
❔Wheelchair access: unverified

Location

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