Finally, a West Loop hotspot that doesn’t break the bank. Chef Paul Virant’s thoughtful take on okonomiyaki is complexly flavored and wholly satisfying.
Latest Chicago restaurant reviews
Which Chicago restaurant should you dine at tonight? Read through our most recent Chicago restaurant reviews.
Carlos Gáytan’s ambitious comeback restaurant channels his roots in Huitzuco, Mexico, with bold, heartfelt and unfailingly delicious results.
This pan-Mediterranean tapas spot in Logan Square aims to please with an array of dishes from land and sea—and it mostly succeeds.
Serving mouth-watering pastries and wholesome, scratch-made sandwiches, Butterdough is the neighborhood bakery that every community deserves.
This modern Korean-American barbecue in River West bridges Korean home cooking and chef-driven Midwestern fare.
Chefs Johnny Clark and Beverly Kim effortlessly tackle every chef’s dream and nightmare: a new four-course tasting menu every night.
Flora Fauna’s jet-setting menu misses its connection due to poor execution.
Alinea Group’s take on the classic supper club is charming and enticingly casual.
Paul Kahan’s love letter to the Breton village of Cancale is an elegant, shellfish-focused bistro with staying power.
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For a long time, we Midwestern Great Lakers kept many of our choicest food secrets in our grocery stores, delis and unassuming corner taverns. I’m talking about chunky smoked whitefish dip; oily giardiniera heaped on Italian beef; tangy beer cheese; crisp-edged hash; and charred, meaty burnt ends. What a time to see these ingredients reimagined with fine-dining ingenuity and breathless seasonality at places like Giant, Daisies and now five-month-old Nettare. Nettare—meaning “nectar,” in reference to the restorative nature of good hospitality—is the debut restaurant of longtime bartender-turned restaurateur Conner O’Byrne (Publican, La Josie), with food helmed by executive chef John Dahlstrom (BLVD, Table, Donkey and Stick). This all-day cafe with a retail shop has the hipster, something-for-everyone vibe that’s pervaded openings since the pandemic. Despite the airy, plant-filled environs, Nettare’s food—punchy, rich and brackish on a recent April evening—recalls the embrace of a neighborhood joint with knotty-wood walls in, say, Petoskey, Michigan, or a timeworn Chicago beef stand. But friendly Midwestern comfort is merely a jumping-off point in the capable hands of Dahlstrom and company. The elongated, brick-walled space unfurls as a regionally focused market and bottle shop up front, past a hallway chef’s counter to the 45-seat dining room in back. Sliding into a banquette as evening waned, I felt soothed by the climbing, leafy plants and dim natural light pouring in from
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.
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.
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.
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
Chicago is home to some of the best steakhouses in the world but few can match the vibe and aesthetic of Maple & Ash. Upstairs on the posh second floor dining room, you’ll spot groups of 20-somethings celebrating birthdays, couples on date nights or power brokers doing business. Chef Danny Grant’s menu aims to please with delicacies like caviar, fire-roasted seafood towers, dry-aged beef and truffle agnolotti. Oh, and save room to build your own sundae for dessert. The following review was published in 2015. The Gold Coast steakhouse marries irreverence with spot-on takes on classic dishes. I didn’t expect to find myself in the middle of a clubby lounge in a steakhouse at midnight, but Maple & Ash inverts expectations. You enter the Gold Coast restaurant through a crowded bar, then take the elevator upstairs to a lively lounge before being whisked into the calm, elegant dining room. I also didn’t expect the chef's choice option to be called "I Don't Give a Fuck” or the “Baller” seafood tower, but I did expect classic steaks and sides from chef Danny Grant and exceptional wines from sommelier Belinda Chang. The dichotomy places Maple & Ash in line with other new steakhouses, like RPM Steak, Swift & Sons, STK and Boeufhaus, which update classic dishes while offering a cooler ambience than old-school spots. The meal begins with a round of freebies—a mini gin cocktail, citrus-cured olives, nubs of Hook’s cheddar and radishes with butter—to snack on while you peruse the menu. Sea
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
The first thing you’ll notice as you enter Alla Vita is the striking interior design, and it doesn’t exactly evoke a quaint Italian village or a mom and pop osteria. With rows of flowing curtains hanging from the ceiling on one half of the restaurant and a pergola draped with greenery arched across the other side, there’s an otherworldly quality to the Boka Group’s latest concept. It’s a self-assured and effective aesthetic decision, because Chef Lee Wolen doesn’t need stacks of canned tomatoes or checkered tablecloths to signify authenticity—the food on your table does the heavy-lifting. Moving from the delicately-plated, Michelin-starred American fare of Boka (where Wolen is still executive chef) to the hearty Italian cuisine of Alla Vita, Wolen approaches his latest menu with gusto. The array of dishes isn’t as expansive as the Cheesecake Factory's tome, but you’ll need to plan out your carb-heavy meal strategically, especially if you want to sample the housemade pasta, wood-fired pizza and entrées like the chicken parmigiana or a ribeye steak in a single sitting. Thankfully, my date and I were especially hungry by the time we arrived for dinner at 9:30pm (you’d do well to plan your visit well in advance, because the more desirable reservations fill up particularly quickly). While I sipped a robust riff on a Manhattan called the Walk of Fame (developed by Boka beverage director Anna Thorn), we ordered a feast that began with an order of arancini. Sporting a delightfully cr
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