Latest Chicago restaurant reviews

We've rounded up the best chefs in the city to join us at Time Out Market Chicago, a culinary and cultural destination in the heart of Fulton Market. The 50,000-square-foot space houses 18 kitchens, three bars and one drop-dead gorgeous rooftop terrace—all spread across three floors. Our mission is simple: Bring the pages of Time Out Chicago to life with the help of our favorite chefs, the ones who wow us again and again. You'll find delicious barbecue from chef D’Andre Carter at Soul & Smoke, creative burgers at Big Kids, fried chicken from Luella’s Southern Kitchen and extravagant milkshakes from JoJo's shakeBAR. If you're thirsty, sit down at one of the Market's bars to enjoy a menu of local beer, a robust wine list or a cocktail created in collaboration with Chicago mixologists. And keep an eye out for events, concerts and artwork within the Market throughout the summer—we're keeping our calendar packed with things to do.

The rooftop restaurant and bar at the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel offers some of the best views of the city, with an expansive look at Millennium Park and the Lake. The drinks, from Nandini Khaund, are mostly balanced, and very pretty, while the American food is also mostly well-executed and comes in massive portions and is designed for sharing.

In a city full of sweeping views, everyone wants to be on top. But this tri-level venue is the tippy top of all rooftop bars. Located on the 21st floor of LondonHouse Chicago, LH Rooftop affords guests stunning vistas of the architecture along the Chicago River and Michigan Avenue. The only downsides: You'll have to arrive early if you want to find a seat, and the drinks aren't cheap. We recommend staying for a glass of bubbly, enjoying the view and moving on.

Italian food is meant to be shared, and at Monteverde, that's never an issue. Fill your table with a smogasboard of small plates, handmade pastas and shareable mains (read: they're freakin' huge). You absolutely mustn't skip the burrata e ham starter—which comes with warm English muffin-like rounds called tigelle—nor the spaghetti al pomodoro, a simple but soul-affirming dish that stars Grueneberg's spot-on roasted tomato sauce. The following review was published in 2016. A top chef serves her own take on Italian classics Sarah Grueneberg left Spiaggia to open her own restaurant, Monteverde, in late 2015, but while she brought along the masterful Italian techniques she honed there, she left the fine dining trappings on Michigan Avenue. At Monteverde, the Top Chef alum's wonderfully relaxed West Loop restaurant, assistant servers wear Blackhawks hats, a TV flips on when the hockey game starts and a gluten-free menu is featured prominently on the website—a nice touch for a pasta-focused restaurant.  That menu is important, since the pastas are the main draw. Made in house, they’re all perfectly cooked and accompanied by sauces and ingredients that look surprising on the menu, but make sense once you’ve taken a bite. The cacio whey pepe ratchets up the classic with four peppercorns and whey, so it’s creamy and intensely peppery. To make the wintery tortelloni di zucca, Grueneberg stuffs squash into delicate pasta, then serves it with apples and bacon. If you sit at the bar, you’

Tucked behind the Game Room in the Chicago Athletic Association, Cherry Circle Room used to be where club members refueled. Now that it’s open to everyone, chef Peter Coenen turns out gorgeous dishes like shrimp cocktail with a delightful Bloody Mary-spiced cocktail sauce and a generous pâté board. A roving cocktail cart serves drinks tableside and ice cream drinks, like a grasshopper served in a milk jar, cap off the meal.

There’s a reason Lula has been a Chicago staple for more than two decades. Chef-owner Jason Hammel and his team present dishes made with the freshest seasonal ingredients, and it shows—from pastries to turkey sandwiches to roast chicken, everything you'll eat here tastes like it's been thoroughly iterated and perfected. The following review was published in 2011. There are a million steaks in this world, and not one quite like Lula's. Slices of flat-iron pattern a plate, semolina gnocchi tucked here and there. It is not steakhouse food. And it is definitely not that strange genre of Italian steakhouse food. This is a steak strewn with kimchi whose heat and crunch is compulsive. Specks of fried sardine pop with brininess, riffing on the fermented cabbage’s funk. It sounds strange, doesn’t it? It’s anything but. Aesthetically, it’s striking. Technically, it’s accomplished. It’s a dish that is very much of its parts: the high quality, consciously sourced, thoughtfully prepared beef; the rustic housemade pasta; the commitment to canning (kimchi); the penchant for small, sustainable fish (sardines). These are the traits that, for more than a decade, one has come to describe as being soLula. But this steak is more than that. It’s a dish that, in its inspired flavor combinations, is greater even than the sum of its very great parts. And it’s not just the steak. On recent visits to Lula, dish after dish pushed the envelope from interesting to exciting. I had a bite that combined swee

It’s both silly and totally understandable that we human beings require tidy descriptors to sum up what kind of food a restaurant serves. Southeast Asian. Midwestern. Northern Italian. But how should one categorize the bold, veg-heavy, anything-goes dishes at handsome newcomer Maxwells Trading? In many ways, this singular menu synopsizes what it’s like to live and eat through major American cities right now—where cuisines, heritages and identities cram together and intermingle. Indeed, Maxwells Trading self-describes as “a Chicago restaurant by children of the city”—the children being Underscore Hospitality partners Erling Wu-Bower (Pacific Standard Time, Nico Osteria) and Josh Tilden (Pacific Standard Time) and executive chef Chris Jung (Momotaro).  Yet even this descriptor feels a little self-serious for what’s in store once you take your seat in the sprawling, urban-chic dining room. Here Chinese soup dumplings collide with pasta traditions of Bologna, Italy; Thai chili sauce dances with bitter greens and rare steak; and edible kelp whisks beurre blanc to the foamy seashore. Maxwells Trading is fresh, fiery and downright fun; I was unsurprised to learn that Tilden and Wu-Bower were inspired to create the kind of place where they’d want to hang out, where upbeat, free jazz spins on the turntable and martinis get their own menu subsection. After all, who said likable means unimaginative?  As this 80-seater is seemingly booked into oblivion*, my date and I walked in moments a

Upon entering this breathtaking riverfront oasis, you might catch yourself wondering if you've been transported to a faraway destination. An offshoot of the popular West Town dining destination by the same name, Beatnik On the River draws inspiration from the ’50s and ’60s, offering dishes and drinks from around the globe. The best tables in the house are on the 80-seat patio, which sits along the Chicago River and is outfitted with colorful tile, Indonesian daybeds and fringe-lined umbrellas. Order a glass of bubbly and stay awhile. 

“Is there a rule that at a certain hour every River North restaurant has to change their soundtrack?” my dining companion asked me as club-like beats started playing in the background at Tanta right at 9pm. At first glance, the new Peruvian restaurant feels like just another River North restaurant—a huge colorful mural on the wall lends a festive vibe, there’s a long bar where guys in suits are drinking vodka on the rocks and the restrooms are located downstairs. But once you move away from the bar and start eating and ordering off the cocktail menu, things at Tanta feel different. It’s more serious, more delicious, and the crowd skews older, with most tables filled with several generations. Tanta is the third American restaurant from Peruvian celebrity chef Gastón Acurio and his first in Chicago. Acurio has more than 30 restaurants around the world, including La Mar in San Francisco (a New York location of La Mar closed last month). He also has Lima’s Astrid y Gaston, which is on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List. It’s also his third Tanta—there are already outposts in Lima and Barcelona. It may be because of this that Tanta is strong right out of the gate—service is prompt and knowledgeable and despite a few minor quibbles, chef Jesus Delgado’s kitchen is turning out dishes that are nuanced and thoughtful. Peruvian cuisine draws on influences from cultures that emigrated to the country, especially Japan and China, and Tanta’s menu reflects flavors and techniques from the

Executive chef Johnny Besch pays tribute to classic steakhouses of the 1950s while also offering some new twists on old indulgences with a menu including steak tartare with sriracha aioli, lobster bisque and steak frites with beef fat fries and bone marrow butter. The dining room also embodies the classic Hollywood vibe with chandeliers hanging over silvery pod-like booths perfect for a celebratory meal. For a taste of decadence without the full splurge, come for happy hour from 5-6:30pm daily, where you can enjoy $7 king crab deviled eggs and $3.50 oysters Rockefeller.

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