Press

When Tripoli Tap chef and co-owner Dean Zanella pitched in to help a longtime friend open his first restaurant in 2014, he didn’t expect anything in return. At the time, he knew John Durning, a pal and former corporate banker, was being pulled in a million directions as he tried to open Pizzeria Deville in suburban Libertyville. So Zanella dropped everything to spend a week getting the pizzeria’s kitchen running smoothly. Six years later, Zanella — who is working to keep his own bar open and solvent during Illinois’s dine-in closures — was the owner in need of assistance. And there was Durning offering a surprising resource: a mobile wood-fired pizza oven, which is now parked outside Zanella’s Boston sports bar in Lincoln Park.

Tripoli Tap Tavern, long a Northside neighborhood favorite, is one of many small local places that are doing their best to get through the pandemic. Chicago’s business environment, laboring under the current health scare, is ripe for innovation, and Tripoli Tap Tavern is pivoting to serve what many Chicago bars have been unable to serve for years: a “tavern pizza” that’s made fresh in-house with imaginative and high-quality ingredients, then put in front of the customer still steaming from the oven.

CHICAGO — In a city known for its nightlife, where’s a Bruins fan to go to watch the Stanley Cup ?Finals and not be harassed by smug Blackhawks fans? Which brings us to the Tripoli Tavern, where Boston fans can be loud and proud because owner Steve Nicoli is a Framingham native and big B’s fan. And so fellow Boston exiles and other Hub rooters who are in town visiting or on business congregate at his Lincoln Park hot spot.

Softball team managers might tell you losing a good sponsor is worse than losing a wife. And while that’s probably not true, thousands of teams go courting sponsors every season at the corner saloon, the neighborhood funeral home, auto agency, realty office, or the pizza parlor down the block. Steve Nicoli, owner of Tripoli Tap at 1147 West Armitage Avenue in Lincoln Park, is a former 16-inch pitcher and outfielder for The Store saloon, which sponsored teams at Hamlin Park, Lake Shore Park, and Oz Park.
Now, Nicoli’s Tripoli Tap sponsors the Vintage Risk softball team which plays Wednesday nights at nearby Trebes Park at Webster & Racine, and Stocks & Jocks, a co-ed team at Seward Park on Division Street.

Boston sports fan call this Lincoln Park watering hole home, but that doesn’t keep out the kids who are just here to watch the game and ogle the waitresses. And though you’d never guess it, the food (clam chowder, open-faced Sloppy Joes, Philly cheese steaks) is restaurant-quality.

Red Sox and Bruins banners proudly flew over the doorway of Nic and Dino’s Tripoli Tap. A neon sign in the front window promoted Sam Adams as the preferred beverage of its patrons. And the paneled walls were festooned with Boston sports memorabilia, all of which was donated by friends, family, and loyal customers...