The Royal Treatment
By Naperville Magazine
April 2025 View more Table for Two
By Phil Vettel
Carnivore & The Queen is a supper club with a upscale vibe
One of the enduring questions about Carnivore & The Queen, the six-year-old restaurant in Downers Grove, is what the name means.
Of owners and co-chefs Chris Matus and Kelli Lodico-Matus, it’s easy to infer that Kelli is the Queen. But is Chris the Carnivore? Is anyone?
You might want to sit down for this.
“Everybody asks that question,” Lodico-Matus says, laughing. “We were thinking of possible names one day, and we came up with that. People ask what the heck it means, and…it’s a funny, catchy name? That’s really it.”
That mystery solved, let’s take a closer look at the restaurant itself. It’s a supper club, a dining category that’s wildly popular in Wisconsin but has had only sporadic success in northern Illinois. Matus and Lodico-Matus seem to have found a winning formula, or at least a very loyal following, expanding into the adjacent storefront (doubling their capacity) about 18 months ago. The additional space can be closed off for private parties, which explains why there are full-service bars in both rooms.
Many supper clubs aim for a rustic, North Woods hunting lodge atmosphere; Carnivore takes a more sophisticated, urban-sleek approach: black walls and ceilings, white linens, dimmable lamp lighting on the tables, indirect lighting elsewhere. Under-counter red lights give the bars a romantic glow. Wall art shares space with a few stuffed animal heads—a whimsical nod to the hunting-lodge thing.
The romantic design seems appropriate; the chefs have been married for years, which is why the menu calls Carnivore & The Queen “A True Love Story.”
“Chris and I started working together 14 years ago,” Lodico-Matus says. “We fell in love over the idea of creating a restaurant.”
Their menu checks off all the supper-club boxes. Among appetizers, there’s a relish tray, albeit a refined version that includes a housemade beer cheese using local craft beer. French onion soup, mac and cheese, wedge salad—check, check, check.
But the sizable menu allows the chefs to make room for throwbacks such as mushroom caps, stuffed with a Parmesan-mozzarella-pecorino blend and hints of white truffle (eating these, I felt like I’d returned to 1974), and baked oysters prepared DeJonghe style, with garlic butter and a blanket of Gruyère cheese. There also are Asian-accented dishes, such as crispy duck lollipops (confit drumettes) and firecracker shrimp (tempura shrimp with a spicy sweet-and-sour glaze).
Entrées include three steaks and a couple of veal chops, along with roasted chicken, bourbon-marinated ribs, and a few Italian specialties; seafood options naturally include baked walleye and shrimp DeJonghe. A dish dubbed “The Hollywood is a butterflied pork chop that’s definitely red-carpet material, gussied up with Iberico ham, sautéed mushrooms, and buttery Havarti cheese in a garlic-lemon sauce—partly inspired, the chefs said, by their trip to Paris.
There are more French influences on the menu: Provencal-style scallops, a beef bourguignon that’s straight out of the Julia Child cookbook (Lodico-Matus, in particular, is a Julia Child devotee) and, recently added, chicken cordon bleu.
To get to some of Carnivore’s best dishes, you have to plan ahead. The excellent beef Wellington, encased in a beautiful pastry crust, is offered only on Saturdays; it’s a $69 splurge, but boy, is it good.
On Tuesdays, C&Q offers Italian specials and a surf-and-turf dish; Thursday’s special is prime rib, a medium-rare slab served with lemon-horseradish sauce; and Friday means a fish fry of beer-battered walleye with fries, onion rings, and slaw.
You can get a fine burger—but only on Wednesdays. On that night of the week, you can choose among three specialty burgers. Toppings vary each week, but the impressive prime rib burger is always one of the options. It’s a monstrous, jaw-stretching patty, topped with thin slices of prime rib, truffled mushrooms, and Gruyère cheese.
There are some nice budget-friendly features, such as the low-priced happy hour menu (noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday) with $2 oysters and other food and drink discounts. And you can turn any regular entrée into a four-course feast (adding the relish tray, wedge salad, and dessert) for an extra $40.
The few desserts are made in-house; I would direct you to the Key lime pie, a classic in every way except for the crust; Chris Matus makes his graham-cracker crust with roasted cashews and a hint of ginger—subtle accents that really elevate the dish.
Carnivore & The Queen has an ambitious beverage program, with a nice assortment of beer and wine, but its strength lies in its classic cocktails. There are various plays on the old-fashioned (the Wisconsin-style brandy old-fashioned among them), and the aptly named Perfect gin martini, made with Skeptic gin (distilled in Melrose Park). Another local distillery makes C&Q’s house-brand vodka; my companion, a vodka aficionado, declared is delicious.
And I loved the Civil War (no, the drink) made with rye, blood-orange juice, cherry juice, and amaro (echoing flavors found in an old-fashioned and a Manhattan) and placed in a “smoke chamber” that’s left tableside; you just have to decide when to stop smoking and start sipping.
Photos: Carnivore & The Queen
