Labriola Italian Specialties Brings House-Made Pasta to Fulton Market

Labriola Italian Specialties will bring house-made pasta, award-winning pizza and fresh-baked bread to 852 W. Fulton Market when it opens April 22, adding a hybrid Italian destination to one of Chicago’s busiest dining corridors.

The project is built around a format that fits Fulton Market’s pace: part neighborhood restaurant, part all-day bakery and part after-hours stop. Labriola’s own site describes the space as a 120-seat restaurant with a mozzarella bar, while Crain’s Chicago Business reported a dining room of about 100 seats plus roughly 30 at the bar. The concept also includes outdoor seating and a walk-up window, giving it multiple ways to serve the West Loop throughout the day.

That flexibility is the point. Breakfast can lean on bakery items and coffee-friendly staples, lunch can turn to pasta, pizza and sandwiches, and dinner can stretch into a full Italian meal built around the kitchen’s pasta and pizza program. The late-night lane may be the sharpest differentiator: the walk-up window is set to serve pizza slices, cannoli and spumoni, which makes the operation feel less like a formal white-tablecloth room and more like a neighborhood hub that stays useful after the bars empty out.

Rich Labriola, who owns and founded Doughboy Restaurant Group, is anchoring the opening on a Chicago baking-and-restaurateur story that started in his father’s pizza shop in the city’s south suburbs. Doughboy also says he later helped build Labriola into a broader hospitality brand, including Stan’s Donuts & Coffee in Chicago. Crain’s reported Doughboy operates 18 Stan’s Donuts in the Chicago area, and Culinary Agents says the company employs about 450 people and is growing at a pace of two to three locations per year.

This will be Labriola’s third Italian restaurant, following locations in Oak Brook and on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The Fulton Market address also carries some built-in neighborhood history: the space most recently belonged to Kuma’s Corner, which had occupied the spot for seven years before closing. In a corridor where restaurant turnover is constant and competition is fierce, that matters. Labriola is not just opening another dining room; it is trying to make a case for an all-day Italian format that can catch breakfast traffic, lunch crowds, dinner reservations and the late-night slice run in one address.