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.

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.

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.

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’

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. 

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

Thick handmade tortillas, salsas made to order, cinnamon-laced coffee. You can get all of that here. Their only purpose, however, is to accompany this restaurant’s signature platters of chopped goat meat. As opposed to other birrierias, this goat doesn’t touch a consommé until it’s plated, when some of the tomato-based broth is spooned over it. At that point, a good dousing of the restaurant’s intricate hot sauce, and maybe a squeeze of lime and some onions, is all you need for one of the city’s best goat tacos.

This all-day concept from Lettuce Entertain You serves lunch and dinner, with a menu centered around hand-stretched pizzas, artisanal pastas and grilled seafood. Expect Italian-influenced appetizers like Parmesan fries, spicy tuna bruschetta and fried zucchini flowers to start. The pizza lineup includes nine pies that are crafted with stone-ground Midwestern grains, in flavors like charred pepperoni, Margherita and vongole bianco, the latter of which is topped with little neck clams, roasted garlic, Parmesan and Calabrian oregano. Heartier, sea-kissed entrees include cold water prawns, split garlic lobster and Atlantic seafood brochette.

Beyond the whole eating-for-survival thing, what endears so many of us to food on a deeper level is its ability to tell a story. In Tzuco’s quenching ceviche verde, for example, you can almost taste pure, cold Pacific Ocean in pearlescent slivers of hamachi, which are paired with three expressions of cactus, a plant that thrives in the most unforgiving locales. The prickly flora is served cured, iced and juiced with mint, lime and a whisper of serrano chile. Together, the elements sing of Mexico’s varied bounty. Each bite I savored at Tzuco seemed to smack of deeper meaning, sparking curiosity about the storied place that inspired this restaurant and its name, along with its famed chef/owner who has roared back into Chicago’s dining scene following an 18-month hiatus. Chef Carlos Gaytán hails from Huitzuco, a town in southwestern Mexico aptly named for the Nahuatl word “huixochin,” meaning plants with abundant thorns. When he was 20 years old, he came to the U.S. on a borrowed passport and worked his way up from dishwasher and cook to eventual chef/owner of Mexique, his French-infused Mexican restaurant that helped make him the first Mexican-born chef to receive a Michelin star. Vowing he’d be back again one day, Gaytán closed the award-winning destination in 2018 and left town to open a restaurant in Playa del Carmen. He made his triumphant return late last year with three eateries that showcase the breadth of Mexican gastronomy. Commanding the entire southwest corner of Sup

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