Eleven Lincoln Park, A Diner And Deli | Lincoln Park, Chicago

Egg creams, root beer floats and banana splits have a new home in Lincoln Park.

Or rather, a new old home, at a refurbished 1961 Bastian-Blessing soda fountain tucked into a corner at Eleven Lincoln Park. The second outpost of the retro deli-diner concept, sister to the South Loop's Eleven City Diner, opened in late June.

Know a dentist or cardiologist? Don't bring 'em here. Eleven's menu makes a few concessions to the healthy set–but to have the most fun in the diner's leather booths, go over-the-top and sweet.

We're talking 25-ounce root beer floats ($7) made with Eleven's custom-made root beer and Homer's ice cream. A Dirty Blonde has scoops of chocolate ice cream and blonde root beer, made with cane sugar, brown sugar and Madagascar vanilla. A Dirty Dirty plops chocolate into dark root beer made from barrel-aged syrup.

A chocolate phosphate, a float and a pastrami-corned beef sandwich

Phosphates and egg creams ($3) use Fox's U-Bet syrup, Brooklyn-made since 1895.

Pair them with Bubbie's Chicken Soup and a giant, quivering matzoh ball ($5) or The Woody Allen, a double-decker tower of corned beef and pastrami on rye ($13).

Owner Brad Rubin, an avid collector of seltzer bottles and malt tins, knows his deli eats, saying, "If anything happened, it happened at a deli–at least at our house."