Ownership changed hands in 1997, when brothers Bill and George Stavrou took over -- the kind of local-family succession that's rarer than it sounds in a neighborhood-tavern business. They tried expanding the concept once: a third Valley Lodge opened in St. Charles, but it closed at the end of 2015, with Bill Stavrou saying at the time it had been pulling staff and resources away from the Glenview and Wilmette locations.
Rather than reinvent anything for the Wilmette spot that remained, the Stavrous carried over the same formula wholesale -- 100% Angus burgers and a rotating lineup of about a dozen drafts -- the neighborhood-tavern playbook that's kept the original going for over 50 years. It's real multi-generational family history behind the name, not a franchise expansion dressed up to look that way.
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