There's a formula here somewhere: Take one Top Chef winner, buy two ancient buildings on three parcels of land, subtract one wall, and multiply that by the number of foodies in Chicago by, say, 1000. Hopefully, you cheated off your autistic neighbor and came up with Chef Stephanie Izard's Girl & the Goat, the most anticipated Chicago restaurant since Paul Kahan promised (and delivered) The Publican. Before the $1.5 million, 130-seat restaurant's grand opening today -- the reservation line opens at 10am-- I followed a road of butcher paper around the saw-dusty digs for a tour of the restaurant with the president of 555 Design Fabrication Management, James Geier.

While the restaurant's name doesn't leave much wiggle room for porn parodies (I could only come up with four), it does keep one guessing what's going on inside. It's definitely rustic. The 7,400 square foot space is a limited color wheel of browns and whites. The walls are burlap and covered in clay, the floors are Ipe hardwood. The tables are made from chunky butcher block, the ceiling from exposed beams and original steel. Practically everything is reclaimed or refurbished. Immediately to the left of the revolving door are custom floor-to-ceiling oak windows and a lounge that's currently empty.

Extending into the lounge, and just beyond the bartenders' reach, the cobbled European oak bar starts as a communal table with chairs on both sides before it thins out and runs along the Eastern wall to guard the alcohol. Above the bar is a series of vintage fireboxes reclaimed from turn-of-the-century Chicago homes that have been sandblasted, cleaned, and mounted with lights, so that when the featured bottles are placed inside they will glow like the Sankara stones in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

As Geier walks me toward the open kitchen on the south wall and points out the 3,000-pound wood-burning pizza oven and the custom-made one-piece Jade appliance that dominates the kitchen, he reiterates that every element of Girl & the Goat was designed to capture the spirit and personality of Chef Izard, the affable, frizzy-haired winner of Top Chef Season Four, the first and only female champion on the show. (The design also accommodates Izard's height, as the oak shelves above the expo line are a bit lower than usual to accommodate her reach.)

Speaking of Chef Izard, she's meandering around with her phone in her hand. The dining room chairs arrived that day and she's contemplating removing their plastic and sending out Twitpics to her 6,000-plus followers. She resists.

"I love the energy of an open kitchen and I like the idea of people sitting right here and being able to talk to the chefs and the cooks," says Izard, nodding to the two king oak tables where she'll be turning out Mediterranean-style dishes with Asian ingredients. So, take note, Mr. Starstruck. She'll talk to you if you have something to say.

The rest of the restaurant includes a floating wall in the middle of the dining room covered in burnt cedar and a slightly raised section to the right of the front door that's enclosed by a thigh-high glass fence.Then there are the seven individual bathrooms downstairs replete with antique sinks, white subway tiles, and beveled mirrors. Each has a personal message from the chef etched into it. I don't know what she's going to write on them, but I'm guessing it'll be under 140 characters.