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The 15 best new restaurants of the year range from high-end French fare to burgers and late-night snacks
If dining in Chicago in 2015 can be summed up with one cuisine, it's steak. But the new restaurants this year challenged our idea of what a steakhouse is, and four of them made our year-end best list. Beef wasn't the only thing we ate and loved this year, though—we fell hard for an elegant French restaurant and two new Italian spots. And not every great new restaurant even required a fork and knife—we devoured lobster rolls from a food truck, ate some tasty new bar food and got messy (and had fun!) digging into spicy seafood and tacos in bags. Here are our picks for the 15 best new restaurants of 2015.
RECOMMENDED: The best of 2015
We spent one of the most delightful evenings of the year at de Quay, where chef David de Quay serves Dutch-Indonesian cuisine, with black pepper-Gouda dumplings to start, a grilled pork chop with rookworst for the main course, and stroopwafel, a warm house-pressed caramel waffle cookie served with vanilla ice cream, for dessert. General manager/wine director Terry McNeese provides spot-on wine recommendations and warm service, and Noel Catrambone contributes a list of terrific cocktails. Add in a cozy space, and there's no better place to be this winter.
Great lobster rolls are hard to come by in Chicago, but one of the city's best rolled into town this year. The Happy Lobster, a food truck that roves downtown and occasionally sets up shop at the Garage in the West Loop, serves an exceptional version. Get it "happy," with just mayo, butter and spices, or "angry," with spicy giardiniera. The meat is perfectly cooked and dressing is restrained, which lets the lobster shine through. Get them in whole or half sizes, but be sure to save space for whoopie pies for dessert.
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