The Best Restaurants in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options

Burt's Place is a deep-dish pizzeria in Morton Grove, and the pie is the whole personality. It comes in a pan with a crust caramelized dark around the edges, the style the late Burt Katz also handed down to Pequod's. Anthony Bourdain once pointed a camera at it and got very reverent. The advice is to order ahead, since a pizza this committed to being slow doesn't care about your schedule.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options

This Hyde Park counter-service spot does meatless versions of the comfort food you'd normally eat in a parked car, burgers first among them. The Big Mik takes obvious cues from a certain drive-thru classic, double patties and special sauce included, with the choice of dairy or vegan cheese. It's casual and inexpensive, the kind of place where ordering ahead online is the smart move. Eater has it on its Chicago burger list.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers

Carnitas Uruapan is a casual carnitas house where the order is measured in pounds, not tacos, though a single taco is allowed. The pork follows a recipe from Michoacán, the region that more or less invented the whole idea, and it comes with cactus salad, pickled chiles, and chicharrón. Brain quesadillas are on offer for the committed. The family now runs three locations, and the one on 55th St hosts the loyal regulars.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. Central

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

Giordano's is a Chicago pizza chain built around the stuffed pie, which is deep dish with a second crust sealed over the cheese and then buried in tomato sauce, like a pizza that got tucked in for the night. Slices arrive tall and heavy, so plan on a fork and a nap. The menu riffs on gyros and Juicy Lucy burgers, and Eater has named it one of the city's deep-dish picks.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

Immm Rice & Beyond is a casual Thai street food counter on Broadway, where the hot bar up front does the talking and the staff will hand you samples if nothing looks familiar. At lunch you can build a plate of rice or noodles with up to three curries, stews, or wok-tossed things, and a chalkboard behind the counter tracks the day's specials. It's Eater's pick for Chicago's best Thai food, and you order at the counter.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

In-On Thai is a casual Uptown Thai spot with a short menu built around Central Thai cooking, the sort of place where the salad section gets more thought than most restaurants give their entrees. The green bean salad arrives with hard-boiled eggs and tender shrimp in a sharp, sour sauce. The fried chicken is the easy first order, and it's wise to say you can handle the heat and mean it. Online ordering is available.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

Istmo is a Lakeview Mexican restaurant devoted to the food of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a corner of Oaxaca most menus treat as a footnote. It serves breakfast too, which is where the green enchiladas come in, built on the chef's mother's sauce, so there's a family stake in them. Dinner gets tlayudas and baked fish, and the drinks have their own point of view. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

This is the dressier, sit-down cousin of the Archer Heights spot that made its name on pozole, and it keeps that dish while wandering off into aguachiles, mole, cochinita pibil, and grilled meats. The sirloin comes with pineapple-habanero sauce and avocado mousse, which is a lot of sauce for one cut and somehow works. Weekend brunch, plus a tequila and mezcal list long enough to need a plan, and sotol and raicilla for the brave.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

Joong Boo is a Korean grocery, and the cooking happens at Snack Corner, a few tables tucked in the back of the Kimball Avenue store. You can get bibimbap, soondubu-jjigae, or a bowl of rice cake soup, then do your shopping with a full stomach, which every grocery trip should begin with. A dumpling shop up front is there if lunch doesn't feel complete yet. Cheap, casual, and nobody minds the cart.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

Kfire is a fast-casual Korean American spot on Milwaukee Ave where you build your own bowl, and nearly everything on the menu bends to your will, including swapping the rice for salad. The galbi gets compared favorably to sit-down barbecue places, and the Impossible crumbles come marinated like galbi and pressed into patties, which is a sentence nobody expected to write. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Korean restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

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2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant
3. The Infatuation Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

A deep-dish pizzeria wedged into the part of Michigan Avenue otherwise devoted to flagship stores and corporate chains. The focaccia-style dough gets a layer of mozzarella before baking, which builds a crunchy, caramelized crust. There's a skinny deep dish for the dough-averse, and an umbrella-shaded patio where you can nurse a spritz and forget the tourist current rushing past. Eater has named it Chicago's Best Deep-Dish Pizza.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

Manchamanteles is a Bucktown Mexican restaurant named after a mole, which is a bit like naming your place Birthday Cake. The room is bright and permanently dressed for a party, and the menu is built around those sauces, sampled side by side on sopes and spooned over slow-braised pork ribs. It's sit-down but relaxed, with plenty of vegetarian and gluten-free options. Eater put it on a list of Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

Mart Anthony's is a family-run Italian restaurant on West Hubbard, in its third generation, and it began as a spot for the founder to hang out with friends. The walls are covered in black-and-white photos of regulars, so you're basically dining inside a very long group chat. Expect red-sauce classics from family recipes, a dozen handmade pastas, and a meatball salad credited to Nana. Come as you are, as the place intends.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Mas Allá del Sol is a sit-down Mexican restaurant on North Broadway where a buttered, griddled telera shows up in place of the usual chip basket. The chef once cooked for an archbishop, which sets a high bar for the enchiladas and the chipotle lamb shank. The mezcal list wanders well past Oaxaca, so plan on a slow dinner. Eater has it on its roundup of Chicago's Mexican restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

Matilda is a River North restaurant that puts Mexican and Peruvian cooking in one kitchen and lets them argue it out on the plate. The guacamole arrives as a roasted avocado you mash yourself at the table, which feels like homework you'd happily do. The wine list is entirely Mexican, tequila and mezcal run the cocktails, and a hidden door leads to a speakeasy, because of course it does. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

Mister Tiger is a family-run Korean restaurant on West Grand, the sort of place where the free banchan arrives before you've decided anything, including whether you like fermented fish cakes. Eater has listed it among Chicago's Korean restaurants. The galbi jjim, braised short rib with carefully carved vegetables in a broth that's sweet with a bitter edge, is the dish to order. The fried chicken and bulgogi hold their own around it.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

Palilgu is a Logan Square Korean bar-food spot where the menu is built for splitting, which is the polite way of saying nobody orders alone. Fried chicken comes whole or in half, with sauces and pickled radish arranged around it like an entourage, and the hot stone bibimbap arrives still crackling with crispy rice. The bar covers soju, makgeolli, Korean beers, and cocktails with a few twists, so the evening tends to run long.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

Peanut Park Trattoria is a red-sauce Italian spot on Taylor Street, run by the people behind Coalfire Pizza, and it's the kind of place where the meatballs arrive before you've finished deciding. The room leans into the theme with a wine-cave wall and enough memorabilia to qualify as a small museum. Walk to the back for the Tony Fitzpatrick art, then order the baked ziti, which comes with 'nduja.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Piccolo Sogno is a sit-down Italian restaurant in River West, and its main trick is a lush garden patio that makes you forget Halsted Street exists. The name means "little dream," which is a lot to put on a menu of wood-fired pizzas and pasta, but the kitchen manages. Pasta comes in appetizer-sized portions, a gift to anyone who orders for the table and then argues about it. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Italian spots.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Pizano's is a casual deep-dish pizzeria in the Gold Coast, part of the small chain run by a son of the Malnati family, which in Chicago pizza circles is roughly the equivalent of royalty with better cheese. The crust comes from a recipe the owner's mother developed, and the sausage, mushroom, onion, and green pepper pie is the one to order. Eater lists it among Chicago's best deep-dish. Expect a long bake and no regrets about sitting still.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

Complimentary valet parking at a Greek taverna in Lincolnwood is either a punchline or a promise, and Psistaria delivers on both. White tablecloths and a long menu of Mediterranean staples, from saganaki and gyros to grilled octopus and broiled whole fish, make it the kind of place that works for a birthday or a Tuesday. The wine list leans heavily Greek, the ouzo flows, and the servers know the menu well enough that you don't have to.

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

Pueblo Nuevo is a casual Portage Park spot built around Mexican street food, where the pambazo, a soft roll dunked in red guajillo sauce and stuffed with fried potato, is the kind of sandwich that ends any argument about whether bread can be a main character. The pozole runs green, made with tomatillos and chicken, and you set the heat yourself. Eater put it on its list of Chicago's best Mexican restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

Ssyal is a Korean restaurant on Lawrence Avenue, and the move here is the samgye-tang: a whole Cornish hen stuffed with sticky rice, jujubes, garlic, and ginseng, then simmered until the broth could talk you out of a cold. The hen arrives in its own tiny bird-sized sleeping bag of rice. Dolsot bibimbap, bulgogi, and ox bone soup fill out the menu, and takeout and delivery are an easy call when you're sniffling.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

A restored coach house on Division Street sets the scene for one of Chicago's more quietly ambitious tasting menus, where the kitchen pulls from South and Southeast Asia through a lens shaped by India, the Middle East, and a detour through finance. Pickling and fermentation run through the menu like a through-line, and desserts tend toward the joyfully unruly. The chef earned a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist nod in 2024.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Zubair Mohajir

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers

Tortello is a pastifico on Division with a storefront window that doubles as a live show, staff cutting and kneading dough for anyone who slows down on the sidewalk. The flour comes from Italy, and a master sfoglina was brought in to train the team, which tells you how seriously they take noodles. It's casual and moderately priced, with fresh pasta by the pound to go and a patio that fills up the minute the weather allows.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

Void is a neighborhood Italian American spot on Milwaukee Avenue in Avondale that skips the "you're family now" routine and just cooks. The menu rotates, though the four-cheese lasagna and fried chicken Vesuvio tend to stick around like they have tenure. The house SpaghettiOs arrive in an actual can, a small gesture of nostalgia that lands without anyone needing to explain it. Eater lists it among Chicago's best Italian restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

This is a deep-dish pizza joint with a sports bar's worth of televisions, built around a founder who developed her own dough, sauce, and sausage blend while raising seven kids. It spent decades as an Englewood fixture before landing in the South Loop. Eater has named it among Chicago's deep-dish picks. There are no reservations, so on game days the move is to show up early and claim a stool like it's a playoff seed.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

This is a burger operation that started as a weekend pop-up and now works out of a convenience store in Logan Square, which is about as Chicago a career arc as you can draw. Weekdays you order at the market, and on weekends the club follows its own social media posts to breweries and farmers markets. The smash burgers get playful, including a version that swaps the bun for a doughnut, so bring a casual appetite and zero fear of sugar.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

This Greek restaurant started in suburban Winnetka and then crept into the city, which is the opposite of how chains usually migrate. The River North room is all plants and pale wood, built to feel like a long lunch on an island with a better ferry schedule than yours. The menu goes past the gyros-and-flaming-saganaki starter pack, though you should still order the saganaki. Eater lists it among the area's best.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

Cafe Bionda is a red-sauce Italian American spot on South State, where the menu still runs on rigatoni in Nonna's gravy and a carbonara that knows what it is. The bar got bigger after the 2022 reopening, and happy hour now draws a loud, cheerful crowd for $9 cocktails and $10 fried things. The lasagna is enormous and takes half an hour, so order it early and have a second cocktail.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

Cindy's is a rooftop cocktail bar on top of the Chicago Athletic Association, with a terrace looking over Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. It's a hotel bar, so expect dressed-up visitors, bachelorette sashes, and relatives in town, plus plates meant for three or four people to share. Regional Top 10 for hotel bars at the Spirited Awards, which is one more reason the terrace fills up first.

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2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

Crying Tiger is a big, lavish Southeast Asian restaurant in River North, where the menu roams from Vietnam to Thailand to China, so clay pot lobster pad Thai and prawn toast share a table without apology. The plating is arranged with photography in mind, and the ladies' room has apparently become a selfie destination. It's a Lettuce Entertain You production, so expect dress-up energy and a check to match.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

Il Culaccino is a sit-down Italian American restaurant across from Wintrust Arena, which explains the pre-game crowd and the chicken Vesuvio. The menu runs red-sauce classics, prime steaks, and lighter pastas, all under burgundy leather banquettes that look like they've heard a few secrets. A wine bar spills onto a covered patio for warmer nights, and the owners also run Franco's in Bridgeport.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

Mr. Beef is a no-frills Italian beef stand, and the building you'll recognize as the exterior of The Bear's sandwich shop, though the cameras only borrowed the outside. The beef gets cooked on-site rather than reheated from a bag, which Chicagoans treat as a matter of principle. Expect a line, a cheap sandwich you'll eat standing up, and a wall of celebrity photos to study while you wait.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

Naia is a Greek-leaning, see-and-be-seen restaurant on the Chicago River, and the view is good enough that the kitchen could have phoned it in. It didn't, which is how you end up with crab on the falafel and caviar offered for the potato fritters. There's a roving hummus cart and a cheese course that catches fire, so dress like someone who expects to be looked at, and be ready for the next yacht to steal your attention.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

Petite Edith is a French bistro on the ground floor of a luxury apartment building, which means the neighbors can claim it without ever putting on a coat. The big U-shaped bar seats solo diners comfortably, and the banquettes in back suit a quiet dinner for two. The kitchen takes French classics through a Midwestern filter, so you get two kinds of bread, and brunch brings duck fat hash browns.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

Reggies is a heavy metal bar and live music venue that happens to serve jumbo, crispy, sauce-soaked chicken wings, which is a sentence you don't often get to write. Rock, rap, and metal shows fill the stage, with the odd cover band, and the rooftop deck runs on heat lamps once the weather turns. Expect fried pickles, sandwiches, and a respectable beer list, plus a dress code best described as band shirt.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

Schneider Deli is a counter-service Jewish deli tucked into the old Ohio House Motel diner, where the midcentury bones survived the renovation and so did the booths. Breakfast runs from corned beef hash to bagels with lox, then lunch turns to pastrami, brisket, and turkey sliced to order while you watch. Casual, quick, and priced like a sandwich shop, which is the correct amount of money for a deli.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

Southern Chicago is a steakhouse-ish dinner spot in the South Loop where the crystal chandeliers and plush velvet seating suggest the Las Vegas Strip got lost on the way to Soldier Field. The kitchen cooks steaks over open flame and stacks seafood towers, and the sides lean decadent, like deviled eggs topped with shrimp and caviar. Plan on dressing a notch up, and on a lot of conventioneers.

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

1. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Ben Grupe

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Great Lakes · Rodolph Cuadros

1. The Infatuation #8 · Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #11 · Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #7 · Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

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1. The Infatuation Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

The server who silently tops off your bowl with consommé from a water pitcher, without being asked, tells you everything about this birrieria. Braised goat has been the one thing on the menu here since forever, and the New York Times named the birria among the best dishes eaten anywhere in the U.S. in 2024. It's a South Chicago institution, cash and early mornings, crumbled chile de árbol on the side.

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