Labriola Italian Opens in Fulton Market, Replaces Kuma's Corner

Labriola Italian Specialties is opening April 22 at 852 W. Fulton Market, taking the space left behind when Kuma’s Corner cleared out. The concept comes from Rich Labriola’s Doughboy Restaurant Group, which already runs two Labriola Ristorante locations, one near the Magnificent Mile and one in Oak Brook, along with the Stan’s Donuts chain that’s become hard to miss across Chicago.

Don’t expect the same menu you’d find at those addresses. This is something different.

The Fulton Market kitchen is built around regional Italian cooking, including spaghetti assassina, a preparation that traces back to Bari, Italy. The dish isn’t a standard boil-and-sauce situation. The pasta gets pan-fried and cooked down in a spicy tomato broth the way you’d treat risotto, which produces a crispy, concentrated result that’s earned a following across southern Italy. They’re also offering Sicilian cannoli made with housemade pastry shells fried in beef tallow, filled with Italian sheep’s milk ricotta, chocolate chips, candied orange peel and Amarena cherry. That’s the kind of sourcing detail that signals serious intention.

The Kuma’s Corner space at 852 W. Fulton Market had history. The heavy metal burger bar anchored that strip for years before it closed, and watching a white-tablecloth Italian concept move into that footprint tells you something about what Fulton Market has become. As Block Club Chicago reported, it’s a neighborhood that doesn’t hold still.

Rich Labriola didn’t offer a public comment on the opening timeline, but the April 22 date is confirmed.

Pizza Lobo isn’t waiting around either. Heisler Hospitality’s third Chicago location landed at 165 N. Morgan St. in the West Loop before April 22 even arrived. The footprint there is significant: a 75-seat island bar on the first floor, a 180-seat dining room upstairs, and a 2,000-square-foot partially covered patio out back. There’s a walk-up window for slices running 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily, plus a photo booth if that matters to you.

Pizza Lobo started in Logan Square in 2020. It expanded to Andersonville in 2023. The Morgan Street address in 2026 represents the brand’s move into one of the most crowded restaurant corridors in the Midwest, a stretch where concepts either stick fast or fold within 6 months. Whether a third location stretches the original brand thin or simply meets demand, the regulars will settle that question quickly.

Mariela is set to open May 6 inside the Reliance Building at 1 W. Washington St., the 1895 landmark in the Loop connected to boutique hotel StayPineapple Chicago. The project is from the team behind Mirra in Bucktown and Sarima Cafe in Wicker Park, with Zubair Mohajir, Rishi Kumar and David Mor credited on the venture.

The menu leans into coastal cooking. Seafood drives it, including an arroz negro made with octopus and scallops in a squid ink sofrito served with uni. The restaurant runs all day, opening at 7 a.m. for breakfast service and staying open into the evening. It’s a different rhythm than most Loop openings tend to follow.

Three openings in a compressed window says something about where Chicago’s restaurant market sits right now in 2026. Fulton Market keeps absorbing new concepts and discarding old ones at a pace that’d make your head spin if you tried to track it block by block. Kuma’s Corner held 10 years or more in that space. The Labriola family has been feeding Chicago in one form or another since before the Reliance Building was constructed in 1895, so there’s continuity buried in the turnover if you look for it.

“We really wanted to focus on the kind of Italian cooking that doesn’t always get represented here,” Labriola told reporters ahead of the April 22 opening, pointing to the regional specificity of dishes like the spaghetti assassina.

The walk-up window at 165 N. Morgan opens at 4 p.m. on weekdays.