The 100 Best Restaurants in Chicago

You arrive through a converted freight elevator in what used to be a warehouse, which sets the tone before you've touched a menu. Oriole is a tasting-menu restaurant where the chef blends French and Japanese ideas into something that reads as neither, with polished service that somehow avoids feeling stiff. It holds two Michelin stars and a James Beard Award, and the room earns both the ceiling collage and the hushed reverence of everyone in it.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Noah Sandoval

The open kitchen anchors a lounge-like room in Chicago's West Loop, and what comes out of it has earned Smyth three Michelin stars and the top spot on North America's 50 Best list. The tasting menu leans on Midwest seasons and a farm garden, but the cooking is genuinely strange in the best way: foie gras doughnuts, kelp tarts, lobster custard with raspberry butter. Strange enough that you stop second-guessing the kitchen about halfway through.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 3 Stars
3. The 50 #1 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants

Dessert ends with a nitro-fueled splatter painting made directly on your table, which tells you everything you need to know about the vibe here. Grant Achatz's flagship is a modernist fine dining tasting menu where scented vapors, hidden ingredients, and tableside theater run all night. It holds two Michelin stars, a Forbes Five Star, and an AAA Five Diamond. Wear something you won't mind sitting in for three hours; standing up is optional, but awe is not.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide 2 Stars

The kitchen runs down the center of the room at this Ukrainian Village tasting menu spot, so you watch the whole production up close. The team sources almost everything from within a four-hour drive and tends to run a single ingredient through several preparations in one meal. On nice nights the backyard fire pit opens, with sour cherry trees visible overhead and, predictably, sour cherries on the menu. It holds a Michelin star and a James Beard Award.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Winner · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jacob Potashnick
3. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants

The hummus arrives first, topped with brisket, alongside salatim and pita still warm from the flame, which is a good sign of what's coming. Galit is a prix-fixe modern Middle Eastern spot on Lincoln Ave, holding a Michelin star, where chef Zach Engel builds a menu that feels personal rather than encyclopedic. The wine list leans into Armenia, Lebanon, and Palestine, so the pairings have something to say.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
3. Michelin Guide 1 Star

Banquettes, mirrored bulbs, and a room that manages to feel romantic without trying too hard: this is a Michelin-starred modern American restaurant on the North Side that has been doing this long enough to make it look easy. The menu chases seasonal ingredients with real precision, and the cocktail program is worth treating as its own course. Lee Wolen's flagship holds a Michelin star and an AAA Four Diamond rating.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Lee Wolen

The CTA rumbles overhead while the chef rattles off ingredients like an auctioneer building to a close. This intimate Uptown tasting menu spins Mexican cuisine through a restless, personal lens, moving from "chips and salsa" rendered as salsa verde jelly and tortilla crumble to a lamb tartare tostada seasoned al pastor-style. Counter seats put you close enough to watch the small team work. It holds a Michelin star and landed on the New York Times Restaurant List for 2025.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The Banchets Winner · Best New Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Norman Fenton

A patio strung with soft light anchors this fine dining room on Randolph's restaurant row, where the menu runs Danish-inflected and quietly seasonal. The kitchen, holding a Michelin star, offers both a tasting menu and à la carte, so the commitment level is yours to choose. Anna Posey's desserts are compositions in the visual-arts sense, restrained and a little arresting. The kind of room where nobody seems to be performing.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The Banchets Winner · Pastry Chef of the Year · TC Lumbar
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Anna Posey

Venetian plaster walls and tables so generously spaced you forget the rest of Chicago exists set the scene at Curtis Duffy's fine dining room on Fulton Market. The cooking is visually precise, multi-textured, and structured like architecture you're meant to eat. Service is choreographed without feeling clinical. A spirit-free pairing option runs alongside the wine program, and the attached cocktail bar, After, is there when you're not ready to go home. Two Michelin stars and an AAA Five Diamond.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
3. Esquire #2 · The Best New Restaurants in America

Dinner at this fine dining tasting-menu spot on Clark Street begins standing up, with small bites served at standing tables near the entrance before you're seated for the multicourse progression. The minimalist room reads like an art gallery, and the dishes arrive on custom ceramics made by local artists. The chef holds a Michelin star and a James Beard nomination. Dover sole and goat cheese ice cream share equal billing on a menu that keeps you guessing.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Jenner Tomaska
3. Eater Lincoln Park’s Best Restaurants

Pani puris and chats arrive at a fine-dining pace in a River North room where rose-pink booths meet exposed warehouse ceilings. Chef Sujan Sarkar runs tasting menus, vegan through non-vegetarian, that read as modern Indian with a quiet French undertow. The food looks composed and architectural, then tastes warmly familiar. A Michelin star and a James Beard nomination confirm what the room full of very still, very attentive diners already suspected.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Sujan Sarkar
3. Esquire #36 · The Best New Restaurants in America

Rick Bayless's fine dining room on Clark Street holds a Michelin star and makes a strong case for Mexican cuisine as a serious tasting-menu occasion. The kitchen roots every dish in regional tradition, then tilts it somewhere unexpected, with the menu rotating through the seasons and sometimes zeroing in on a single state's food. The agave spirits pairing is its own curriculum.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. AAA Three Diamonds

Skillet cornbread arrives with a steak knife and honey butter, which tells you most of what you need to know about Erick Williams's Southern restaurant in Hyde Park. The dining room is warm and unhurried, the kind of place the university crowd treats as a standing Thursday plan. Williams holds two James Beard Awards, and the Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand. The cooking is rooted and serious without ever feeling like a lecture.

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Winner · Emerging Chef · Damarr Brown
2. AAA Three Diamonds
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Winner · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Erick Williams

The menu changes entirely with each new theme, so you might land on ancient Rome or a meticulous recreation of Escoffier's Paris. It's a tasting-menu restaurant in Fulton Market where the conceit is the whole point, and the kitchen takes it seriously enough that it works. A Michelin star lives here. Come curious, leave wondering what the next theme could possibly be.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

No servers, rap music overhead, and a Michelin star: Schwa has always done things its own way. This tiny BYOB tasting menu spot runs on the chef's terms, which means the kitchen sends out whatever it feels like that night, and "whatever it feels like" might be chilled gumbo or foie gras ice cream in a cinnamon shell. The cooking is genuinely strange in ways that somehow cohere. Shots of whiskey may arrive at the end, which feels about right.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. The Infatuation #3 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Chicago
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago

Chef Phillip Foss lives upstairs, which pretty much sets the tone. This Michelin-starred tasting menu in a converted warehouse runs one seating a night, serves everyone at once, and asks you to bring your own wine. Guests wander into the pantry, hover next to the cooks, and eat off plates that occasionally require licking. The menu shifts constantly, but the French fries with potato leek soup and nitro-poached ice cream never leave.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant

The antojitos here lean into Aztec culinary tradition that most Mexican restaurants skip entirely, which gives this Logan Square neighborhood spot a menu worth reading slowly. The chef has earned James Beard nominations and a Michelin Bib Gourmand while running what is, at its heart, a warm, unpretentious antojeria. Seasonal cocktails, knowledgeable servers, and a room that stays lively without tipping into loud.

1. Eater The All-Time Eater 38
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Diana Dávila
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. The Banchets Nominee · Best New Restaurant
3. The Banchets Nominee · Best Design

Soup dumpling tortellini is either a great idea or a cry for help, and at Maxwells Trading it reads as the former. This contemporary restaurant in the West Loop packs a converted warehouse, where the bar stretches nearly the full length of the room and the kitchen folds Japanese, Chinese, and Thai threads into a single, coherent menu. A rooftop herb garden feeds the kitchen. Named a James Beard nominee for Best Chef: Great Lakes two years running.

1. The Banchets Winner · Rising Chef · Chris Jung
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Chris Jung and Erling Wu-Bower
3. Wine Enthusiast Top 50 New Restaurants

The menu at this Vietnamese restaurant in Pilsen is split into five sections and leans into lesser-known dishes, the kind that make you feel like you've been missing something for years. The room offers an open kitchen with counter seats, a cocktail bar, and two dining rooms, one with communal tables. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand. The cafe next door, Cà Phê Đá, handles coffee and street food.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Thai Dang
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Roman pizza comes out of an open kitchen at this spacious trattoria in the West Loop, where Joe Flamm followed up Rose Mary with a full homage to the Eternal City. The pasta is made on-site, the wine list is all-Italian, and the amaro cocktails are worth staying for. Carciofo alla giudia, the deep-fried artichoke the place is named for, gives you a pretty clear sense of where the kitchen's priorities lie.

1. Condé Nast Traveler The best new restaurants in the world
2. The Infatuation #10 · Chicago’s Best New Restaurants
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Frank Callero, Joe Flamm, and Steven Zaleski - Day Off Group

The wood-grain bar wraps around the pasta station, where sheets are rolled, cut, and hung to dry in full view, which tells you everything about what Sarah Grueneberg is doing at this West Loop Italian spot. Counter stools fill by 5:30, and the regulars who claim them rarely need menus. The cucina tipica runs deeper than pasta, but the pasta is why people talk. A Michelin Selected restaurant.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Emerging Chef · Bailey Sullivan
3. The Banchets Nominee · Chef of the Year · Sarah Grueneberg

The dim sum here comes plated like jewelry, each shumai crowned with a different color of tobiko. This is Chinese luxury dining of the kind you rarely find outside Asia, served on the fourth floor of the Peninsula with Michigan Avenue spread out below. A dedicated abalone section signals where the menu is headed, and the prices follow. Come with a reservation and dressed for the occasion.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now

The entire room is wood-plank from floor to ceiling, which either reads as cozy or a fire hazard, depending on your mood. This West Randolph wine restaurant has been packed since forever, with regulars jostling for counter stools and close-set tables to graze through a seasonal Mediterranean menu. The plates are bold, colorful, and generously sized, and the wine list leans into the food rather than upstaging it.

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. The Banchets Winner · Restuarant of the Year
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Dum biryani folded with lamb barbacoa is a reasonable sign that this Bucktown restaurant is not picking a lane between Mexican and Indian, and has no intention of starting. The kitchen weaves the two cuisines into a menu that earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand and an Eater Chefs of the Year nod. Exposed brick, a long banquette, an open kitchen, and a crowd that arrives loud and leaves louder. Share everything.

1. Midwest Living 2025 · Best of the Midwest
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America

Caviar arrives on mother-of-pearl spoons, and the potato gets the Robuchon purée treatment, which tells you exactly where you are: a polished French restaurant in an era when that's a rarer breed than it once was. The kitchen still bakes madeleines to order, and for a modest surcharge a waiter will shower Périgord truffles on whatever you're eating. The New York Times named it among Chicago's 25 best restaurants. Dress accordingly.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. The Banchets Nominee · Best Hospitality
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now

Jason Vincent's Logan Square neighborhood restaurant holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and earned a James Beard nomination, which is a lot of hardware for a place that puts onion rings on the menu without irony. The room is modern-rustic and small, with a chef's counter in the back for anyone who wants to watch the kitchen work. The food is familiar American but tilted just enough to keep you guessing what you ordered.

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Chef · Jason Vincent
2. AAA Three Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A single plaque by the door is all that marks this 22-seat omakase counter on West Lake Street, so walk slowly. Chef B.K. Park's room is hushed and focused once you're in, the surrounding traffic completely forgotten. The kitchen moves through nigiri with quiet precision, finishing courses with things like chawanmushi rich with mushroom and crab. Dessert pulls its weight too. Mako holds a Michelin star, and the room earns every quiet minute of the reservation hunt.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

The dining room sits quietly above a working brewery, which tells you something about priorities here. Moody Tongue is a Michelin-starred tasting menu spot on the South Side where the beer pairing is treated as seriously as the food, not as an afterthought for people who skipped the wine list. The room is dim and close, the kind of place where a weeknight feels like an occasion whether you planned it that way or not.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. The Banchets Winner · Best Design
3. The Banchets Nominee · Sommelier of the Year · Kat Hawkins

A converted ice skaters' warming hut on the edge of a Lincoln Park pond, with the Chicago skyline framing the water outside the windows. North Pond runs a tasting menu that moves with the seasons, the chef pulling in Latin and Asian influences alongside herbs from a rooftop garden overhead. The room is warm brick and candlelight, the kind of place that earns its romantic reputation without visibly trying.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater Lincoln Park’s Best Restaurants

The zakusky cart rolling through the dining room is a good sign: Eastern European grandma cooking, done with real intention. Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark named this Avondale restaurant after one of their grandmothers, and the menu follows, from horseradish vodka at the bar to green borscht thick with dill and egg. Balkan wine, stuffed cabbage, challah-soft pampushky. It's the kind of meal that makes you wonder why this cuisine took so long to get here.

1. Midwest Living 2024 · Best of the Midwest
2. The Banchets Nominee · Best Hospitality
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A sleek, intimate tasting room on West Chicago Ave where two chefs turn Korean pantry staples into something considerably more architectural. The room is small and modern, the cooking precise, and the mood falls somewhere between a serious dinner and a genuinely good time. A Michelin Selected restaurant, and a Bon Appétit best new restaurant pick a few years back. Wear something nice and leave the night open.

1. The Banchets Nominee · Best Hospitality
2. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The beef fat fries are the kind of thing that quietly reorganizes your priorities. John's Food and Wine is a laid-back neighborhood restaurant on North Halsted with exposed white brick, a long banquette, and a wine program worth lingering over. You order at the counter, then someone shows you to a table, which turns out to be no hardship at all. The menu runs from country ham to dry-aged steaks, and the room fills with people who seem to have stopped resisting.

1. The Banchets Nominee · Best New Restaurant
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Time Out #13 · The 25 best restaurants in Chicago

Sujan Sarkar's follow-up to Indienne lands on Lincoln Avenue with a focus on regional Indian cooking, the sharing-plate kind that turns dinner into a group negotiation. The room runs warm and the menu swings between vegetarian and non-vegetarian plates, all designed to pile up. Walk-ins can park at the full bar. A Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod in 2026 suggest the neighborhood noticed.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Eater Lincoln Park’s Best Restaurants

A charcoal hearth does most of the heavy lifting at this Adriatic-inspired restaurant in West Fulton Market, turning out lamb and other mains with a smoky authority you can smell from the door. Chef Joe Flamm built the room to feel like a Croatian konoba, all whitewashed walls, rustic clay, and hanging plants, with servers who can actually walk you through the menu. Bright, easy, and louder than a library.

1. The Banchets Nominee · Restuarant of the Year
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago

A single chef's counter runs the length of a cool, dark room in Wicker Park, putting every diner front-row for the kitchen. Valhalla is a tasting menu spot where the food roams freely, pulling from Filipino, Mexican, Chinese, and Indian traditions in the same meal. The cocktail and wine pairings are taken as seriously as the food, which is saying something. The Banchets named the sommelier of the year for 2025.

1. The Banchets Winner · Sommelier of the Year · Jelena Prodan
2. The Banchets Nominee · Chef of the Year · Stephen Gillanders
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Food & Wine Chocolate Bourbon Tiramisu · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Ten seats, one seating, everyone served together: Chef's Table runs like a dinner party where the host happens to have a Michelin listing and a thing for caviar. It sits inside the private Astor Club on the Gold Coast, though non-members can book a spot. The tasting menu leans luxe, with ingredients that suit the hushed, gilded setting. Forbes Four Star. Jacket-and-a-good-story territory.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The menu at this tiny taco shop on Pulaski is exactly one thing: birria, slow-stewed goat, served bone-in or bone-out, on a plate with handmade corn tortillas or drowning in a bowl of rich consommé. That's it. The bone-in is the move, and the quesadilla is the move you make when no one's watching. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a room where nobody's there to be seen.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Time Out #2 · The 25 best restaurants in Chicago
3. The Infatuation #18 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Chicago

Checkered tablecloths and red-sauce ambition fill this cozy Italian-American fine dining spot in River North, where the Hogsalt group went full throwback and meant it. Pastas are made in-house, portions are unapologetically generous, and the tiramisu is heavier on the booze than most places would dare. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a room this loud with this much garlic in the air.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Tucked into Little Saigon on the North Side, this Oaxacan restaurant draws a room full of people who have been to Oaxaca and know the difference. The focused menu runs to pork tamales with green mole and wide, crackling tlayudas, all brought to the table with quiet care. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place where regulars probably have opinions about your order. The neighborhood setting keeps the vibe relaxed; the cooking does not return the favor.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The Banchets Nominee · Best Neighborhood Restaurant
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. The Banchets Nominee · Sommelier of the Year · Kat Hawkins

The whisky list arrives on a retro departures board, which tells you something about how seriously this West Loop modern Japanese restaurant takes its own theatrics. Multiple kitchens run simultaneously across an impeccably designed space, turning out robata, sushi, and small plates to a crowd that books well ahead. The private dining room upstairs is styled like a mid-century boardroom, in case you needed more proof this place has a sense of humor about itself.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A mural of Michelle Obama in a hanbok greets you at the door, which sets the tone for a Korean steakhouse that doesn't take the expected route. The room is sleek but warm, with large windows onto Milwaukee Ave. and a semi-open kitchen. The menu reads like familiar Korean comfort food seen sideways, banchan on every table, kimchi stew, fire chicken, and Wagyu tartare brightened with Asian pear. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The Banchets Nominee · Best Design
3. The Infatuation Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

Santa Masa is a counter-service tamale shop on Chicago's Northwest Side, run by a husband-and-wife team who clearly believe masa is a personality. The tamales lead, but the short taco list holds its own, and there's a guajolota, which is a tamale stuffed into a torta, because someone in Mexico City decided carbs deserved a second carb. It's cheap, casual, and a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Great Lakes.

1. The Banchets Nominee · Best Counter Service
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

Every time someone lifts the lid on the rice cooker, garlic fills this narrow Filipino restaurant on Western and essentially announces the whole menu's priorities. Started as a food stall, it holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a James Beard semifinalist nod. Pork runs the show in several forms, steelhead trout swims in tamarind broth for balance, and the deep-fried plantain spring roll dusted in brown sugar is the kind of dessert that reframes what dessert can be.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Joe Fontelera

The order at this old-school Italian beef counter is "beef, hot, dipped," and you say it fast because there's a line and nobody here has time for your uncertainty. Johnnie's has been slinging thin-shaved, garlicked beef soaked in its own jus, piled into a roll with spicy giardiniera, since before most of its regulars were born. You eat over the hood of your car in the parking lot, which is not a quirk but the entire point.

1. Time Out #5 · The 25 best restaurants in Chicago
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago

1. The Banchets Winner · Best Neighborhood Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Nicolas Poilevey and Oliver Poilevey
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options

1. Time Out The best Chinese restaurants in America

Tall ceilings and low light inside the Belden-Stratford give this contemporary restaurant a quietly dramatic feeling before the food even arrives. The menu roams freely, pairing roasted lamb meatballs with tikka masala butter one course and bibimbap with mushroom bulgogi the next, and the banana budino has outlasted every menu refresh for good reason. The sommelier took home a Banchets award in 2025, which explains a lot about the wine list.

1. The Banchets Winner · Sommelier of the Year · Jelena Prodan
2. The Banchets Nominee · Chef of the Year · Stephen Gillanders
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The menu is organized by ingredient rather than course, with an entire section devoted to goat, which tells you everything about the kitchen's sense of humor and ambition. This lively New American restaurant on Randolph Street fills every night with groups working through shareable plates in a warm, beamed room full of dim corners and elevated platforms. A Michelin Bib Gourmand spot where the flavors are direct and the portions, upon request, flexible.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The cheeseburger, griddled and stacked with onion aioli and double cheese on a toasted sesame bun, has its own reputation to manage. But The Loyalist is a proper basement brasserie doing quiche Lorraine, anchovy toasts, and trout grenobloise with a polish that quietly nods to the tasting-menu restaurant upstairs. It sits below Smyth, which holds three Michelin stars, and the kitchen shares the same sensibility at a fraction of the formality.

1. Time Out #18 · The 25 best restaurants in Chicago
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers

Apolonia is a hotel restaurant in the South Loop with the calm, spare look of a place that doesn't need to shout, and a Euro-Mediterranean menu with white-tablecloth ambitions. The handmade pastas are the main event, and a truffle puff bread arrives at the table with enough theater to turn heads two booths over. Its sommelier took home a Banchet, so the wine list probably isn't an afterthought. Dress like you've been somewhere.

1. The Banchets Winner · Sommelier of the Year · Jelena Prodan
2. The Banchets Nominee · Chef of the Year · Stephen Gillanders
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

1. Wine Enthusiast Top 50 New Restaurants
2. The Banchets Nominee · Rising Chef · Madalyn Durrant

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Frank Callero, Joe Flamm, and Steven Zaleski - Day Off Group

1. The Banchets Nominee · Best Neighborhood Restaurant
2. The Infatuation #19 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Chicago

Table-shaken margaritas set the tone at Rick Bayless's long-running regional Mexican restaurant on Clark Street, where the menu rotates around whatever's local and the molé gets the kind of attention most kitchens reserve for special occasions. The room runs warm and loud in the best sense, with music that makes the wait feel shorter than it is. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and Eater counts it among Chicago's essential restaurants.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago

1. The Banchets Nominee · Best Counter Service
2. The Infatuation #10 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Chicago

Edward Kim's Bucktown restaurant plays Midwest and Chinese off each other in ways that feel neither forced nor fussy. It's a casual, feast-style spot where the menu roams freely and the cooking has enough personality to pull it off. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place where the food is ambitious but the vibe stays loose. Go with a group and order widely.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. The Banchets Nominee · Rising Chef · John Dahlstrom
2. Time Out #20 · The 25 best restaurants in Chicago

A basement small-plates spot on Broadway, Chilam Balam holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a rotating menu of modern Mexican shared plates that changes often enough to keep regulars guessing. The kitchen has a knack for pairing unexpected ingredients without it ever reading as a stunt. Waits can run long, but the staff will talk you through the menu until you feel like a regular, which helps.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

The name translates to "eat rice," which turns out to be solid advice. This casual Northern Thai spot on Cermak runs BYOB, with graffiti-style signage, colorful murals, and hip-hop keeping the room from taking itself too seriously. The menu is short, the flavors run hard at spicy, salty, sour, and sweet all at once, and the Michelin Bib Gourmand means the math works in your favor. Bring friends and a cooler.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · America's Classics: Great Lakes

This Korean pub on Northbrook's Milwaukee Avenue strip treats baseball, karaoke, and a very large amount of fried chicken as one coherent plan. Beer arrives in a tableside tower, which turns a seafood pancake into a group project. It's casual and loud in the way a place with a karaoke setup has to be, and it works best with a crowd that doesn't mind sharing a tteokbokki skillet and an opinion on the pitching.

1. The Banchets Nominee · Best Heritage Restaurant
2. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

The hummus arrives looking like a still life, crowned with charred and crispy chickpeas, zhoug, and za'atar, and the table hasn't even filled up yet. This wood-fired Middle Eastern restaurant in River North comes from the team behind Indienne, and earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand by loading the table with dips, small plates, and things fresh off the grill. The menu is built for sharing, though everyone will test that theory over the last scoop of house-made ice cream.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

Milli is the Avondale cafe from the Metric Coffee people, a daytime bakery and coffee bar where the pastry case does the talking, from a carrot tarragon loaf to a breakfast hash galette. It's the sort of room where a pour over and a laptop can both be justified. Later on the cocktails show up, vermouth on draft included, and in warm weather the big patio fills with people who have nowhere to be.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago
2. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

The ceiling is draped in colorful fabric to conjure a Bedouin tent, and the smell of mesquite smoke handles the rest of the welcome. This sprawling Middle Eastern grill in the southwest suburbs sends out kefta, shish kebab, and lamb on platters sized for a small wedding party, with hummus and rice enough to guarantee leftovers. The New York Times put it on their short list of Chicago's best restaurants right now, which is the kind of thing that's hard to ignore.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now
2. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

The focaccia here arrives stuffed with ricotta, taleggio, and truffle oil, which a Times writer once described as a quesadilla for superyacht owners, and he wasn't wrong. This rustic Mediterranean small-plates restaurant is the larger River North sibling of a West Loop original that made communal bench seating feel like a good idea. Shareable plates, a warm room, and a crowd that lingers long past the last bite.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

The mochiko fried chicken, made exclusively from dark meat, is a reasonable place to start understanding what this Hawaiian plate lunch spot in Highwood is about. The chef went from feeding co-workers at a carwash to a brick-and-mortar in what feels like about fifteen minutes. Loco moco, huli huli chicken, and grilled pork belly land on your tray with the kind of confidence that got the place onto the New York Times list of top Chicago restaurants.

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The mochiko fried chicken, made with dark meat only, has apparently non-negotiable opinions about itself. This Hawaiian plate lunch spot grew from pandemic-era pop-up dinners to a downtown Chicago address, serving huli huli chicken, loco moco, and grilled pork belly to a city where 60 degrees is not, in fact, considered freezing. The New York Times named it one of Chicago's 25 best restaurants right now.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now
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Etc. is a stylish Southern restaurant in the Loop, a neighborhood not known for fluorescent pillars or an R&B soundtrack that makes you forget you're a few blocks from a Willis Tower gift shop. Couples split smoked turkey rice and fried okra, friends pass lamb chops, and the oxtail comes under gravy, next to purple grits. The chef is a James Beard Best Chef: Great Lakes semifinalist, if you like your comfort food credentialed.

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Gavroche is a modern French restaurant in Old Town, and the burger gets most of the attention. It's a brisket and short rib patty dressed in seared foie gras, caviar, and black truffle, with beef-fat fries, for $55. That tells you the rest of the menu isn't playing it cool either. Expect a date-night room where people dress up a little, then order a hamburger like it's perfectly normal.

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Pan Artesanal is a Mexican bakery on Fullerton where the cinnamon rolls come in tiramisú, arroz con leche, and chocoflan, which is a lot of dessert to ask of a roll. Past the conchas you'll find egg sandwiches in red sauce, chilaquiles, and tacos on handmade tortillas. It tends to sell out early and a line forms, so arrive before the pastry case starts looking picked over. Eater has it on its Best Mexican Restaurants list.

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2. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants

1. US Coffee Championships #1 · U.S. Coffee Roasters Championship · Diego Guartan

1. US Coffee Championships #1 · U.S. Coffee Roasters Championship · Diego Guartan

1. US Coffee Championships #1 · U.S. Coffee Roasters Championship · Diego Guartan

1. US Coffee Championships #1 · U.S. Coffee Roasters Championship · Diego Guartan

1. US Coffee Championships #1 · U.S. Coffee Roasters Championship · Diego Guartan

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. The Infatuation The 14 Best Restaurants In The Loop

Crystal pendants, hand-painted tile floors, and an amber sculpture drifting overhead set the tone at this West Loop Italian from the Boka Restaurant Group. The menu moves through freshly made pasta, puffy-edged pizzas, and a confident roasted half chicken, with a long stone bar doing brisk sandwich work at lunch. It's the kind of room where you can linger over a bottle or be in and out in forty minutes, and the staff reads the difference without being asked.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Sinatra murmurs overhead, leather banquettes fill the room, and the bread basket arrives before you've even settled in. Elina's is a neighborhood Italian-American restaurant done with real affection for the canon: clams casino, rigatoni alla vodka, chicken parm under a blanket of marinara and mozz. The kitchen doesn't reinvent anything, which is rather the point. Cozy, intimate, and thoroughly absorbed in its own nostalgia.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

1. AAA Four Diamonds

Ceramics shipped directly from Mexico line the walls of this lively Mexican restaurant from Carlos Gaytán, and the earth-toned room hums at a volume that suggests nobody has ever eaten alone here. The chef's counter is the seat to angle for, where the kitchen turns out dishes that sit comfortably between traditional and inventive. Tacos, aguachile, tinga de pollo, and a horchata tres leches that tends to follow you home.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Bistro Monadnock is a wood-paneled French bistro on a quiet side street near the Art Institute, which makes it a natural place to go after a morning of looking at French things and deciding you'd like to eat some. There's an open kitchen, a bar, and booths that rarely require a plan. Your server may volunteer a tour of the dry-ager or a short lecture on the building, and it's wise to let them.

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A sunny corner spot in Logan Square where the kitchen skips the tweezers and the fancy glassware in favor of food that tastes like itself. Cellar Door Provisions is a casual, Mediterranean-leaning restaurant with the kind of unfussy cooking that makes you wonder why anyone bothers with the other kind. The Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks. Counter seats, date nights, and wandering-in-off-the-street all work equally well here.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The U-shaped bar and oceanic color scheme set the mood before you've ordered a drink. Chef's Special is a cocktail bar and Chinese-American kitchen in Logan Square doing crab rangoon and shrimp chips without a hint of irony, which is exactly the point. The dan dan noodles and the bone-in pork shank with black bean sauce pull serious weight. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, and the room is loud and happy enough that nobody's surprised.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Studded leather banquettes and low, nostalgic lighting set the tone at this moody River North gastrobar, where the front bar runs cocktails at a steady clip and the kitchen leans into big plates and bolder flavors. Fried chicken with a proper crust, beef cheek pot pie with bone marrow gravy, a carrot cake you'll talk yourself into ordering despite having no room: the Michelin Bib Gourmand crowd knows what it's doing here.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A curing chamber visible from the dining room sets the tone at this all-day salumeria in Logan Square, where the pig cutout over the door is not subtle and not meant to be. The Michelin Bib Gourmand spot runs charcuterie boards and deli sandwiches by day, then pivots to steak frites and duck confit on weekend evenings. Honeycomb tile floors and old wood joists give the room an unhurried, old-world feel.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The whiskey list at this Logan Square gastropub runs long enough to suggest the bar is the main event, and the dim wood-paneled room backs that theory up. Then the kitchen, tucked into a corner, starts sending out terrines and sweetbreads and omelets folded with brie that quietly reframe the whole situation. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of neighborhood place where people wander in at breakfast and somehow stay for dinner.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. The Banchets Winner · Best Counter Service

Glass doors open into a bright, modern dining room on Belmont, fitted with a leather banquette and planters that look suspiciously well-tended. Sochi is a modern Vietnamese restaurant where the menu leans into careful sourcing and pho built on long-simmered bone broth. The Michelin Bib Gourmand crowd skews local and unhurried, the kind who know to save room for the cassava cake when it appears on the dessert card.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Walls painted in tropical pinks, blues, and oranges set the tone at this traditional Mexican restaurant on Cicero, where Dia de los Muertos artifacts share space with live mariachi. The mole manchamanteles, whose name translates to "tablecloth stainer," earns the warning: mahogany-dark, nutty, and rich enough to demand every freshly made tortilla on the table. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the kind of place that makes you wonder what you've been doing at lesser spots.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. The Banchets Winner · Best Heritage Restaurant

The name is lifted from a German fable, which tells you something about what you're in for. This Logan Square neighborhood restaurant does Alpine cooking in a rustic inn setting, with communal tables, an inviting bar, and a charcuterie selection long enough to be its own evening. The kitchen has a playful streak that runs all the way through to pretzel ice cream with jalapeño caramel. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Edison bulbs, dark wood, and long high tops set the tone at this gastropub in Logan Square, where the same team behind next-door Lardon turned their attention to dinner. The menu leans comfort without losing its nerve, running from fried cheese curds to shawarma-spiced chicken with flatbread. Craft beer gets serious treatment, with a locally sourced lineup. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and every table seems to have at least one cheeseburger on it.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. The Banchets Nominee · Sommelier of the Year · Patti Robison

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3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · James Martin