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  1. Save to a list Write a review On the Way Around

    Cafe Yaya is an all-day neighborhood cafe in Lincoln Park from the team behind Galit, and it opens early enough to catch the weekday breakfast crowd. The menu blends Levantine, French, and Southern ideas, which sounds like a lot until you meet the smoked lamb bacon in a BLT. Order at the counter, stay for the lemon pound cake, and expect a casual, low-key morning that stays well under fine-dining money. Eater has it on its Chicago breakfast list.

    The awards strongest first

    One number, weighted & current 78

    How we score

    The dishes from the writeups

    • Stuffed breakfast boreka

      “a menu of distinctive breakfast offerings like the stuffed breakfast boreka, filled with lamb merguez, potato, garlicky labneh, and tomato jam”

      Eater
    • LBLT

      “the LBLT, which involves Yaya’s own smoked lamb bacon and za’atar aioli”

      Eater
    • Zesty lemon pound cake

      “End the meal with the popular zesty lemon pound cake.”

      Eater
    • Shakshuka buns

      “The pastry counter is full of hits: shakshuka buns with tomato sauce and eggs, date cake punched up with rose, pistachio apricot scones, and walnut baklava.”

      The Infatuation

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Eat Score

The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

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    Drink Score

    The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

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      Stay Score

      Four fifths of the score is the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin Key outweighs a listicle. The last fifth is where it is: the ranked places to eat and things to do around it, and how safe the country is. When you sort by what's nearby, distance from you changes the order, never the score.

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        Do Score

        The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

          How we score →

          Best Place Score

          The Best Place Score rates the area around a point, not any one place. The places are 60% of it: the best of what's within reach, weighed by distance. The setting is the other 40%: how life goes in that country (how people rate their own lives, how long and how well they live, how safe they are) and what it's like right there (the air, and the weather). If the score looks low, we probably haven't found enough critics out here yet.