The Province was one of Lincoln Park’s newest restaurants. Tiny, it had been decorated to look like the home of a French peasant, or at least what a Chicagoan might imagine such a home would look like. There were wide plank tongue-and-groove wooden floors, ecru walls painted to look like aged parchment, complete with artfully placed cracks, some large enough to let the brickwork beneath show through. A large fieldstone fireplace dominated one wall of the room, its mantel crowded with pewter candlesticks, rustic leather-bound books, and above it, a mirror that had been shattered and reassembled. Across from the fireplace stood a small bar with no stools, only a brass rail, where patrons could order drinks like Pernod or Lillet Blanc. Between the fireplace and the bar were about eight or nin
