Korean BBQ Ribs Restaurant Opening In Downtown Joliet

JOLIET, IL - The city's vision of turning downtown Joliet into a restaurant and entertainment corridor continues to materialize, one building at a time. The latest addition will be K BBQ & Ribs, a Korean style restaurant that aims to open in mid-May. K BBQ is in the 200 block of North Chicago Street. It's a couple doors up the block from Juliet's Tavern and next to Joliet Junior College's impressive six-story Culinary Arts Building.

Dillon Kim, one of the investors in K BBQ, told the Joliet Patch on Monday that a big grand opening event for K BBQ & Ribs is tentatively slated for the end of May. He is hoping to have the restaurant open around the middle part of next month.

The remodeled building is about 80 percent finished, he said. Kim also operates the adjacent storefront, American Family Insurance. He owns the building that will house the new sit-down restaurant.

K BBQ will be a casual and family dining venue, he said. It will also handle carryout orders.

In years past, the building served as Chicago Style Ribs, however, that closed after a fire in January 2017. (On a related note, that business recently resurfaced on Broadway Street, near the Haunted Trails, as Chicago Style BBQ.)

Meanwhile, contractors have been busy over the past several months renovating the downtown building. It has all new plumbing and electrical, plus a brand-new roof, Kim said.

"We dumped a lot of cash into it," he said.

Kim told Patch he wants K BBQ to become a popular downtown landmark restaurant. The restaurant's operators hired a talented master chef, and another one of the chefs is a graduate from Joliet Junior College's highly regarded culinary arts program, he said.

He believes that people from all over Joliet and the surrounding area will drive downtown to check it out.

"K is very popular all over the world," he said.

From his vantage point, the opening of the Korean restaurant could not come at a better time for Chicago Street.

RELATED: John Bays Will Get Downtown A Fancy Restaurant: Ferak Column

This month, the city plans to tear down the former State's Attorney's Office building across from the Rialto Square Theatre. It's part of a venture to expand the City Center Plaza and reconfigure Chicago Street, which will happen next year. A couple blocks from the Rialto, dozens of contractors are busy building a new 10-story Will County Courthouse at the former First Midwest Bank site.

"I love downtown Joliet," Kim said. "The downtown is really starting to come together. I'm trying to restore this area."

Kim told Patch he fully expects "a few more restaurants will be opening in the downtown."

One of the next restaurants expected to open is at the site of the legendary Olde Keg Pizza. The Keg has sat vacant for the past nine years. In February, the Joliet City Council approved a liquor license for Catrina's Mex, a new Mexican restaurant, that plans to open at the former Keg.

RELATED: Downtown's Olde Keg Coming Back To Life

Images via Joliet Patch Editor John Ferak