CHEZ QUIS?

“4,000 restaurants in the Chicago area. I pick the one my dad goes to”—Ferris Bueller.

There are many notable scenes in the movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In fact, one could characterize the movie as a lengthy series of notable (and funny) scenes, from start to finish. Every now and then, there’s an occurrence that takes us back to the beloved film, outside of landing on the film while channel surfing.

The latest occurrence is the sale of the mansion used to depict the exterior of the fictional French restaurant Chez Quis, in which Ferris, somewhat embarrassingly to his mates, pulls off his imposter of Abe Froman, the sausage king of Chicago, to land not just an impossible-to-get table, but personal attention from a snooty maître d’.

The house, located on North Dearborn Street, sold for $5.65 million, down from the original asking price of $5.95 million. The seller was the estate of the late private equity manager and philanthropist Richard Driehaus. The estate also recently sold another home in Chicago on Schiller Street and a mansion in Lake Geneva. Driehaus passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2021.

Driehaus’s philanthropy focused on architectural preservation— the Driehaus Museum on Erie Street in Chicago celebrates his passion— so it’s perhaps fitting that his former home received a cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. While the interior scenes were shot at a restaurant in Los Angeles, a side entrance to the mansion on Dearborn Street depicted the restaurant’s entrance.

The film itself yo-yos between scenes shot in the L.A. area and Director John Hughes’s beloved North Shore and Chicago. As clever and well written and funny the movie is, it’s also a personal homage to Hughes’s hometown. He once said of the Bueller residence that’s shown on camera in the opening scene, “This house was in Long Beach, California, and it disappointed me that the first shot in my movie that took place in Chicago was in Long Beach.”

In addition to the well-known, Chicago locales featured in the film—Wrigley Field, the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Board of Trade, Willis Tower, the North Shore features heavily in the film. Hughes, who passed away suddenly in 2009, spent much of his youth in Northbrook and attended Glenbrook North High School. The school has featured in other Hughes films and serves as the backdrop for the scene where Ferris springs Sloane from school (grandma met an untimely death), an event that kickstarts the rest of the movie.

The water tower in Northbrook, known as the “Save Ferris” water tower in the film also make a brief cameo, as does Glencoe Beach (where Ferris and Sloane try to calm Cameron down after the Ferrari mileage fiasco), downtown Winnetka (Ferris’s mom’s real estate office), and of course 370 Beech Street in Highland Park where the red Ferrari meets its ultimate, unfortunate, fate.

Circle back to Chez Quis and the historic mansion on Dearborn Street. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of those get-stuck-on movies while channel surfing. You see it, you smile, and you’re stuck. The scene in the restaurant is especially reflective of the philosophy Ferris expresses at the very beginning of the film.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you can miss it.”

When Sloane suggests to Ferris that he is going too far in trying to sausage king his way past the intolerably snooty Chez Quis maître d’ and he might get busted, Ferris replies, “A—you can never go too far; B—if I’m going to get busted it is not going to be by a guy like that.”