The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

Lao Peng You is a tiny, no-frills dumpling and noodle spot where the dumplings arrive plump, in a dried shrimp broth, and the chile oil is homemade enough to sell by the jar. Two brothers took their grandmother's lessons and ran with them, and the noodles have a pleasing chew. Seats are scarce, so arrive early or spend the wait watching other people's dinner with open envy.

1. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

1. Eater Lincoln Park’s Best Restaurants

Lost Larson is a Scandinavian-leaning bakery and cafe in Andersonville that mills its own flour, which sounds like a bit until you see the loaves. The pastry case looks like a Great British Baking Show finale, all tarts, cardamom buns, and savory croissants. Order at the counter, grab a sandwich or an afternoon bun with Earl Grey sugar, and expect to linger over coffee longer than you planned.

1. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

1. Eater All the New Restaurant Openings to Know in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Brunch Restaurants

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Bar Program
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Tucked into a historic greystone next door to Moreno's Liquors, a southside family institution, Osito's Tap is a neighborhood cocktail bar where the drinks lean hard into Latin American classics, agave spirits, and Micheladas done right. The connection to the liquor store isn't just sentimental; the spirits selection reflects it. Low-key enough that you might walk past it, specific enough that regulars don't want you to find it.

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

This is a Pilsen panadería where you grab a tray and a pair of tongs at the door, which makes you feel briefly like you work there. The shelves of Mexican pan dulce run from cocoa-dusted conchas to molasses-heavy marranitos, and a dozen kinds of tortillas, spinach and black bean jalapeño among them, cover the savory side. Nothing costs much, so you'll leave with far more than you planned.

1. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

Pierrot Gourmet is a French bakery-cafe attached to the Peninsula Hotel, which means it's the one place in that building where nobody asks you to dress up. Grab a seat among the brunching tourists if you like, but the to-go line is where the flaky chocolate croissants, hefty cinnamon rolls, and tarts shaped like chrysanthemums are moving. The Infatuation includes it on its Chicago bakeries list.

1. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

This is the bakery that quietly supplies the bread for The Publican and its sibling meat counter, with a small storefront attached for the rest of us. Pastries start at 7am, the loaves land around 9, and the sourdough comes with a crust that puts up a fight. There's nowhere to sit, so you buy more than you meant to and eat a croissant in the car like a person with a plan.

1. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

1. Time Out #24 · The 25 best restaurants in Chicago

Sarima is a small bakery that shares a room with a burger chain, which is the kind of living arrangement that sounds like a sitcom premise. The pastries mix Filipino and Indian flavors, so the donuts come filled with calamansi and shrikhand cream, and the cookies borrow from kaju katli. There are a few tables, but most people treat it as a grab-and-go morning stop before work.

1. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

1. Eater All the New Restaurant Openings to Know in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Brunch Restaurants

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Breakfast Spots

Susu is a steakhouse on West Randolph that borrows from Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Asian kitchens, so the usual creamed spinach has some company. It also runs a weekend bakery out of the back entrance, where pre-ordered croissants, shakshuka danish, and tahini canele get picked up like contraband. The breakfast sandwich comes loaded with house-made wagyu sujuk, which is a lot of ambition for a pita.

1. Eater All the New Restaurant Openings to Know in Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

1. The Infatuation The 29 Best Bakeries In Chicago

1. Midwest Living 2023 · Best of the Midwest
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Time Out The 40 best coffee shops in Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Brunch Restaurants

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

1. The Infatuation #13 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Coffee Shops

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Eater Lincoln Park’s Best Restaurants

Rick Bayless runs a small empire in Chicago, and somehow his airport torta counter at O'Hare landed on the New York Times list of the city's 25 best restaurants. It's a quick-service spot, so expect a counter and a tray, but the choriqueso, a griddled sandwich of molten Jack cheese, chorizo, and avocado, audibly crunches when you bite it. The tortilla soup is the same recipe they pour at Frontera Grill. Boarding group 7 has never been so bearable.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

The aquarium smoker in the window tells you what kind of place this is before you get through the door. Uncle John's is a South Side Chicago BBQ shop running one of the city's rarest traditions: pork hot links and rib tips cooked in a plexiglass box, fire controlled by hose, a technique tracing back to Delta pitmasters who came north during the Great Migration. The New York Times named it among Chicago's 25 best restaurants.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Brunch Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Breakfast Spots

1. Eater All the New Restaurant Openings to Know in Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Coffee Shops & Cafes In Chicago

This Edgewater pizza shop does deep-dish on a sourdough crust that borrows from a Greek bread called lagana, then turns around and makes cracker-thin tavern pies from the same dough. There's barely any seating and the oven is small, so most people order online and take it home, where an uncut pizza stays crunchy. Eater has put it on its lists for deep-dish, thin-crust, and best pizza overall.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants
3. Eater Chicago’s Best Pizza

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The cocktail menu runs 32 pages and opens with a table of contents, which tells you everything about how seriously this hotel bar takes its work. Originals are sorted by style; classics are filed by decade. The room holds up in daylight just as well as it does after dark, which isn't something most hotel bars can say without lying. Bring someone who likes to read before they order.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The ground floor runs dark wood and dim light, with a long bar and clandestine booths; upstairs it's velvet couches and armchairs, like someone's very well-stocked living room. This Lincoln Avenue cocktail bar leans into an old-time saloon feel without making it a costume, pulling sixty-plus classics-leaning drinks organized by spirit and style. The Harry Johnson-style etchings on the menu are either charming or insufferable, depending on your mood.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater Best New Restaurant · The 2025 Eater Chicago Award Winners
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Burgers
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses

1. Eater Best New Bar · The 2025 Eater Chicago Award Winners

Fioretta is a Fulton Market Italian steakhouse styled after a 1950s supper club, which means a lounge with a stage, a roving cart that makes your Caesar at the table, and cannoli stuffed with wagyu tartare. Expect dressed-up people, shared pastas, and a shellfish tower that arrives like an event. Book ahead, and know that dinner here involves a live band and a fair number of Sunday prime rib orders.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses

Flo & Santos is a South Loop pub that can't pick a lane, so it picked three: tavern-style thin-crust pizza, Polish comfort food, and a beer garden with daily specials. Order the pie with kielbasa and sauerkraut and a pierogi sampler on the side, and your cardiologist will lose track of the subplots. Casual, reasonably priced, and equally happy to see you in a work shirt or a ballgame jersey.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Chicago’s South Loop

This is a steakhouse that stayed old-school while the rest of River North went glam, and it has the two-story building to show for it. The menu runs to chops, veal, and chicken Parm alongside the steaks, and regulars start with the Garbage Salad, which comes with salami and jumbo shrimp, so it's not a salad in any meaningful sense. The room is full of Chicago deal-makers who haven't changed their order since the Eisenhower years.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

This Pilsen pizza-and-coffee spot wears its owners' Filipino and Mexican roots on the crust, most memorably with longganisa and giardiniera together on a tavern-style pie. The menu includes pan pies and slices, plus coffee drinks from the people behind Side Practice, so you can have breakfast and dinner in one visit. It tends to sell out, which is the polite way of saying go early and bring a plan B.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Pizza

1. The Infatuation #1 · The Ice Cream Power Rankings

The Alston is a French-leaning steakhouse on the third floor in River North, where the bread gets sliced at your table and you pick your own candle holder, which is the kind of decision-making that makes a steakhouse feel like a party. Steaks are wood grilled with French sauces on the side, but the duck gets pressed tableside, with a metal contraption wringing out the jus. Eater lists it among Chicago's best steakhouses and River North's best restaurants.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

This is an upscale steakhouse operating out of a former Chicago Fire Department firehouse, which in a city with no shortage of steakhouses counts as a differentiator. Red leather stools ring a central bar, the main room is all wood paneling, and the back patio has white marble tables. Happy hour brings oyster deals, wagyu sliders, and lobster bisque under a puff pastry lid. Upstairs rooms host office holiday parties, naturally.

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

Uncle Jerry's is a casual deep-dish pizzeria in Cary, tucked inside a butcher shop, so the sausage on your pie was probably made a few feet away and the steak case sits right there as a quiet reminder of your priorities. The crust runs neither thick nor thin, the sauce leans a little sweet, and the pepperoni comes cupped. The beer list is solid, and the drive from Chicago is about an hour.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza
2. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

Zarella is a River North tavern-style pizzeria run by the Boka group, which means the thin, cornmeal-dusted pies come with a cocktail menu and a downstairs speakeasy lounge. Two well-known Chicago chefs developed the crusts, and the toppings include mortadella and all-beef pepperoni, so expect River North prices for what is, technically, bar pizza. Eater has named it among the city's best tavern-style pizza spots.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in River North

The name comes from the owner's childhood in Guerrero, where he and his siblings sold radishes at the market and got saddled with the nickname Cinco Rabanitos. This is a casual Pilsen taqueria, the order-at-the-counter, nobody-dresses-up kind, and the menu runs from tacos to tortas to caldos. Guerrero shows up in the slow-roasted pork in red mole and in the cecina, and Eater has it on its list of Chicago's best Mexican spots.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Mexican Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Korean Restaurants

1. The Infatuation #10 · The Ice Cream Power Rankings

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. The Infatuation #19 · The Ice Cream Power Rankings

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Thai Food

The kind of Lincoln Square storefront you'd walk past without a second glance, which is exactly the point. Inside, Atelier is an intimate fine dining room built around a tasting menu that pulls from nearby farms and wanders across cuisines without ever losing focus. A Michelin star landed here, and the kitchen earns it quietly, sending out dishes that feel both deeply familiar and genuinely strange in the best possible way.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

1. Eater The Best Places to Eat in Suburban Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Italian Restaurants

Bartoli's is a casual deep-dish pizzeria on Addison, run by the grandson of one of the guys who started Gino's East, so the family has been loading pies with cheese for a while. The crust is on the light, flaky side, the sauce leans sweet, and a spinach-and-cheese number named for a nonna is the one regulars point to. Slices are sold for lunch, which spares you a two-pound commitment on a Tuesday.

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Deep-Dish Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Lunch Options

1. The Infatuation #6 · The Ice Cream Power Rankings

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Steakhouses

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Pizza

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

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

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

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Tavern-Style Thin-Crust Pizza Restaurants

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