It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

Last year, Dion McGill started a new job at 680 Lakeshore Drive. It's at Streeterville building with the blue and gold tower on top.

Anyway, he was pretty excited for a lot of reasons.

And one was this glamorous-looking nightclub on the ground floor.

A sign on one side of the door listed jazz greats who'd played there,

like Tony Bennett, Liza Minnelly, and Lionel Hampton.

And on the other was this elegant gold-lettered sign that read,

The Gold Star Sardine Bar, and I'm a jazz fan, so I was really interested in it.

You know, Lionel Hampton and all of that.

Even though the club had been closed for more than 20 years,

Dion heard it had been preserved inside.

So he rode into Curious City asking about the history of the gold star Sardine Bar.

I'm Curious City reporter Monica Heng, and I picked up Deon's question because the answer digs up a shiny little treasure of Chicago history.

It tells the story of music, movie

stars, and one man's dream for bygone glamour, and how that dream was ultimately funded by,

well, gourmet groceries. To tell the story, I've tracked down court records and a bunch of folks

who worked and frequented the bar during its 14-year run,

beginning in 1983.

They include Tribune's senior writer Rick Kogan.

It was in the early 80s when I first walked into this place and made an assessment right away that, wow, this place can only seat 30 people, maybe 60.

And some say that's where that name, the sardine bar, came from.

Folks were packed in like sardines.

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