Marion Street Grille

Terry Thulis is a purist. As Oak Park’s keeper of steakhouse culture, he’s true to staples of the great indie chophouses of the ’50s and ’60s: filet mignon, the wedge salad, brandy ice, frog legs. That’s right: frog legs, as both an appetizer and an entrée. Not fried, but sautéed: the way the storied Phil Smidt's of Hammond, Ind., used to serve them.

And like his inspiration — Smidt got playful with frogs in restaurant ads — Thulis gets playful with frogs in restaurant décor. Thanks to the talent of Thulis’s interior designer girlfriend, Diana Ostreko, Marion Street Grille is a habitat for waggish renderings of stout green amphibians.

The wit continues.

There’s a respectable rotation of soups at Marion Street Grille, but not a one of them can be the soup du jour. “Soup’s always better the second day,” says Thulis, a veteran of restaurants in Bucktown and in St. Louis. Here there’s Yesterday’s Soup.

In the near decade and a half that Thulis has raised the hip quotient for the downtown spot that was a family diner, celebrity sightings at Marion Street Grille are the norm. And taking notes all along has been Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed, who since early 1996 has spotted all these folks here at least once: Garry Meier, Chris Columbus, Ruben Gonzalez, Tim Nolan, Johnny Morris, Arny Granat, Jim Byrnes, Dan Hampton, John Corzine, Andrew Greeley, Denyce Graves, Kathy Griffin, John Mahoney and George Wendt.

Mahoney and Wendt are regulars. Look to your left on the way in. You’ve got to read what George Wendt wrote before “Marion St. rocks.”

On your birthday:

The candleholder is brandy ice, a dessert staple from the glory days of indie steakhouses.