These restaurants are worth saving up for a visit
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There are a variety of ways to celebrate in a major metropolitan city like Chicago, and the city’s restaurants are waiting to take your money.
There are times when you circle a calendar date and start saving. There are special occasions where a dive bar and a Crave Case won’t cut it. And while spending a huge chunk of money isn’t a prerequisite for marking an achievement, there’s certainly no law against such enjoyment. Tasting menus are one vehicle for that — carefully plated dishes that may use fancy ingredients or techniques mastered in culinary school. These dishes resemble art and are sometimes too pretty to eat. But you’ll eat them and sop up those sauce dots with a smile. These meals also ask for a time commitment. Usually, they can take two hours, so plan accordingly.
Now, we know some folks will object. Tasting menus aren’t the robust fare that Chicagoans enjoy. Well, the city has plenty of steakhouses to scratch the itch. But for those who are skewing away from the frat life, there are other options. Still, we recognize tasting menus don’t always satisfy so we included a few different options that are worth a splurge.
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Duck Sel is anything but conventional. It’s a pop-up that hosts about two dinners a month inside an apartment in Edgewater — chef Don Young doesn’t want to give away the location. The exceptionally tight-knit staff outkicks their coverage. No way should a tasting menu produced in a small non-commercial space taste this good. Young’s laid-back demeanor hides a killer intensity. He wants to produce fun and pretty dishes using premium ingredients. He may provide a syringe so diners can inject sauces or have other playful props. These are not gimmicks; they make sense in the context of what he’s trying to accomplish. But jump on reservations. There’s limited space.
Women-fronted tasting menu restaurants are a relative rarity in Chicago, but in Edgewater, Herb chef and owner Patty Neumson has spent a decade carving out a distinctive niche with her upscale Thai restaurant. In place of a lengthy list of dishes, Neumson offers seasonal tasting menu lineups that translate the depth and delicacy of familiar Thai flavor profiles into gorgeous, colorful curries, stews, and dishes loaded with a bounty of fresh herbs and produce. Options include a tasting menu for two and a “chef’s special” tasting menu.
Atelier gave chef Christian Hunter, who in 2023 earned a James Beard nomination in Connecticut, a chance to move to Chicago to take over the Lincoln Square space that once held Michelin-starred Elizabeth. Designers could only do so much inside the small space to give Atelier its own identity, but Hunter (now a co-owner) and founder Tim Lacey have forged a bold new direction. Hunter’s menu is light and strikes the right notes of nostalgia (the semolina cheese curds are marvelous). Lacey brings a unique intensity to the drink list and the best non-alcoholic pairing in the city.
Chef Norman Fenton, formerly of shuttered tasting menu spot Brass Heart, has revived the Uptown space with Cariño, a petite 20-seat restaurant where he seeks to channel the hidden retreats of Mexico City. In addition to a 12-to-16-course tasting menu, a lineup bursting with modernist takes on aguachile, tetelas, and tostadas, Fenton, a Schwa alum, has also unfurled a late-night taco omakase featuring eight to 12 iterations of his wildest taco dreams. Recent submissions include taco de suadero with a side of jardín and truffle quesadillas made on a stone comal.
Chicago’s only Persian tasting menu restaurant is a warm and friendly and has a vegetarian option. The smoky eggplant dish is a highlight, as is the lamb chop, which evokes the feeling of sinking your teeth into a lamb kebob at neighborhood staple Reza’s. There are enough surprises on this affordable tasting menu to keep coming back.
A quaint retreat with singular views of Lincoln Park’s North Pond Nature Sanctuary, this restaurant is prized among diners seeking to mark a special occasion in a subtly elegant style. Its building, created in 1912 as a warming shelter for ice skaters, has undergone a significant redesign guided by the Arts and Crafts tradition. North Pond draws on this same organic, ornamental approach with seasonal tasting menus featuring courses like bacon-wrapped rabbit loin (roasted artichoke, pine nut brittle) and coffee-rubbed wagyu striploin with beef cheek beignet and apple butter jus. The restaurant sits in the middle of Lincoln Park — the actual park, not the neighborhood. There’s no other restaurant like it.
Chicago native Jenner Tomaska left the Alinea Group to open his own restaurant, a sleek corner space in Lincoln Park that also has a bar component. Esme gives life to an avant-garde tasting menu that showcases a diverse list of vendors and often brings an aspect of visual art to the space. Tomaska and his wife Katrina Bravo are keen on community, and that’s not some fuel for a cringe-worthy meme. They showcase local artists and partner with community groups to use their platform genuinely. Tomaska’s menu comes with a little bit of a mad scientist vibe. Enjoy it.
Chicago’s omakase scene has grown significantly since 2018, when chef Otto Phan decamped to Chicago from Austin, Texas to open Kyoten, his eight-seat sushi haunt in Logan Square. That shift is due in large part to Phan himself, who brings his live-wire energy to his pursuit of the highest craftsmanship possible. That opportunity, however, comes at a price, as this is one of the city’s spendier tasting menus.
Arguably the crown jewel in James Beard Award-winning Boka Restaurant Group’s pantheon of Chicago restaurants, Boka has reigned over Lincoln Park for nearly 10 years and secured a Michelin star under the steady guidance of lauded chef Lee Wolen, a veteran of Eleven Madison Park. Noted for his thoughtful treatment of produce and proteins (think black truffle roasted chicken and grilled lion’s mane mushrooms with lapsang souchong), Wolen offers an eight-course tasting menu.
Alinea, one of two Chicago restaurants with a full three stars from Michelin, is one of the most important restaurants in America, with a tasting menu that blends technique and art. This is the prototype entry that posh diners point to when saying meals are more than sustenance. Chef Grant Achatz attempts to challenge customers with unorthodox presentations, exotic ingredients, and interactive dishes unlike anything Americans have tried. When the dishes land, they leave an impression. When the dishes don’t, they also leave an impression. The menu, one of the most expensive in the country, usually delivers and is the one most cited as a bucketlist restaurant.
Schwa isn’t for everyone. It’s the once-underground punk rock band that’s broken through the mainstream with a few singles in a sea of U2 and John Mayer. It’s flirted with a major label but wants to stay indie. The restaurant, another tasting menu option, was founded by Michael Carlson, and when it opened in 2005, its approach to service, with the kitchen staff also acting as the service staff, was a breath of fresh air. The 26-seater features a minimalist interior, with the thinking of pouring all the resources into ingredients. One of its most popular dishes is a quail egg ravioli.
Coach House is the tasting menu sibling to Lilac Tiger located behind it in Wicker Park. Whereas Lilac Tiger — originally Wazwan — is a bar with a casual menu, Coach House takes a maximalist approach to Indian food with delicate presentations and bold flavors. Chef Zubair Mohajir is South Indian, but there’s no mention of Kerala or Goa. Mohajir’s roots are Muslim, so there’s a different approach and exploration of ingredients that many Americans don’t associate with Indian food. The tasting menu may feature a top-flight momo or bread service that blends India flatbreads with a Midwestern relish platter. Mohajir is a James Beard-nominated chef and takes chances. A newer menu blends Mexican and Persian/Indian cuisine.
Chef Brian Jupiter and Pioneer Tavern Group have found success with Frontier, a neighborhood restaurant and bar that indulges Jupiter’s Louisiana roots. For folks wanting to splurge, the option comes from full-animal service where customers call days in advance and arrange for suckling pigs, goats, lamb, or racks of tomahawk steaks for group dining. Call the restaurant for availability, but a meal to feed 8 to 12, which comes with sides, will cost around $800. It’s a great value for a unique experience.
Kasama is the world’s first Michlein-starred Filipino restaurant and has set off a Fil-Am food boom in Chicago. While the long lines in the morning are for the cafe, the dinner service is a wonderful tasting menu that challenges perceptions. The lumpia course is a masterclass in textures. The adobo squab might be the most delicious squab ever prepared. The items are thoughtful and are a departure. Many folks may feel elevated Filipino food just means using expensive ingredients and Lola’s recipes. That’s not the case with Kasama, which tests boundaries with exceptional service. Its owners never intended to open a tasting menu restaurant, but the pandemic forced their hand. Chicago is lucky to have it.
Jeong grew out of a suburban food court stall, with chef Dave Park’s food drawing diners from all over the Chicago area. Now settled in West Town, Park and partner Jennifer Tran have created a very formal space allowing Park to dazzle by playing with Korean ingredients and flavors. Park is a precise chef delivering favorites such as a cured salmon with yuza, dwenjang, creme fraiche, and crispy rice pearls. It’s a thoughtful experience.
Indienne is Chicago’s only Michelin-starred Indian restaurant, a tasting menu effort from Rooh founder chef Sujan Sarkar. Sarkar has created a breezy menu (which has a vegetarian option) that takes familiar Indian flavors and presents them uniquely. There’s a canapé course, pani puri, and more. It’s not meat-heavy, and that might turn off folks equating meat with satisfaction. That helps to keep the menu prices low. For folks who don’t need the cliched wagyu beef course, Indienne is a delight and a way to explore a different side of Indian cuisine.
Rick Bayless’s flagship River North restaurant is reservation only and has helped redefine Mexican cuisine in America. Bayless is Chicago’s most famous chef and has meticulously researched Mexican food, reaching out to other chefs. He takes his role as a cultural ambassador seriously, even though his lineage isn’t Mexican. Many come into the restaurant with a chip on their shoulders, wanting to dislike Bayless, and while he’s not perfect, he’s managed to delegate kitchen responsibilities to chef de cuisine Meagan O’Connor and pastry chef Jennifer Enyart (the latter was a Bayless alum and left to open Dos Urban in Logan Square; she and her cake wizardry are back in Downtown Chicago). Even if you have your apprehensions about Bayless, it’s worth a visit if not to have a true understanding of what you supposedly dislike. You’re likely going to leave surprised.
Lettuce Entertain You has gone big on the second floor of the St. Regis Chicago, a 101-story luxury hotel and skyscraper that soars above Navy Pier on Upper Wacker Drive. Tre Dita focuses on Tuscan cuisine, with fresh pasta and beef curated by star LA chef Evan Funke. Funke abhors tasting menus. He wants to stuff you with carbs and protein, but only the best. The space is blissful, among the most beautiful in Chicago with gorgeous views. Though the restaurant only recently opened, Tre Dita is the type of spot that is worth seeking out. There’s also a bar with a separate menu if a splurge is too much.
Curtis Duffy is one of the most respected chefs in the city, the subject of the documentary For Grace, and a chef who has Michelin stars tattooed on his wrist. With Ever, Duffy and co-owner Michael Muser have created a cavernous restaurant with exceptional service and a blissful menu that allows Duffy’s imagination to come to life. This is another bucketlist restaurant, but one that restaurant industry members save up to visit. They have that much respect for Ever’s staff and want to experience the theatrics and attention to detail. Yes, it was featured in The Bear.
Oriole isn’t as stuffy as most fine dining restaurants and there’s a focus on attentive service that’s not overbearing. Chef Noah Sandoval has helmed a Michelin-starred restaurant that is a bit more playful with the tasting menu than most of its ilk and price range that have come before; the menu is described as contemporary American. But the only limit is Sandoval’s imagination.
Perhaps Chicago’s premier sushi omakase, Mako offers a 15-course menu with some of the freshest fish to be flown to Chicago inside a sleek and small space in the West Loop. There aren’t a lot of curveballs with the omakase, and that’s OK. Let the ingredients speak for themselves.
Smyth was upgraded in 2023 as Michelin awarded the restaurant with its maximum three-star rating. The food from John and Karen Shields is a tasting menu that can only be conceived through close relationships with farms and a thorough understanding of how that would play inside a restaurant where diners have high expectations. One of the best items on the current menu is king crab that’s been shelled and once again wrapped in a new shell made of beeswax. Why would they take the extra step? The beeswax adds a pleasant aroma and an additional sweetness to the crab. And it’s much easier to break versus the crab’s original shell. This is the type of thoughtfulness that Smyth brings to the table consistently.
Helmed by the dynamic one-two punch of chefs and spouses David and Anna Posey, Elske leads diners down the garden path of lighthearted Scandinavian-influenced cuisine with a helping of charming, contemporary aesthetics. Below the surface, however, lies a deeply serious commitment to easily overlooked elements like fermentation and wine pairings. There’s an a la carte selection, but for a true look inside the couple’s vision, opt for the set menu, which features courses like duck liver tart with salted ramp and confit cod with charred squash and enokis. Ana Posey is a 2024 James Beard nominee and art school graduate. Her desserts could be worth the visit alone.
Bonyeon comes from a tradition of Korean meat omakases, a type of restaurant that showcases different cuts of quality meat with different marinades. It’s uncommon in America with the most famous being Cote in New York. In Chicago, Bonyeon shares ownership with two neighboring restaurants, Michelin-starred Omakase Yume (also worth a splurge) and Tengoku Aburiya. At Bonyeon, diners will feast on beef from wagyu Japan and America from different farms. A particularly solid time is wagyu slathered with thinly sliced onions. The chef has been perfecting this item for decades. These are small courses that won’t overpower like a typical American steakhouse. Quality meat satisfies better, so there’s no need for a huge slab of meat to fill you up. The chefs cook in front of the customers.
There’s a kind of dour pretension generally associated with fine dining that’s become the subject of several cinematic takedowns as of late — think Ralph Fiennes as the executive chef from hell in the 2022 thriller The Menu. That narrative, however, falls away completely at EL ideas where chef Phil Foss and his team prove that there’s room for joy in avant-garde cuisine. Secreted away in Douglass Park, the restaurant exudes an unassuming Midwestern-ness (Foss is a Milwaukee native) with a well-lit dining room and wide-open kitchen where diners can sidle up for a mid-service chat. That sense of fun translates to the tasting menu in courses like tzatziki with sunchoke chips and piquant toasted garlic. It’s served sans utensils, which means everyone in the room is left to lick their plates with abandon. Foss is also famed for his French Fries & Frosty, a dessert inspired by his daughters’ habit of dipping fries into their Wendy’s shakes. A marvel of molecular gastronomy in a milkshake glass, it’s a hot-and-cold melange of crunchy potatoes, steaming potato leek soup, and nitro-poached vanilla ice cream.
Over in Pilsen, far from the bustling sidewalks of Asia on Argyle, chef Thai Dang has captured the attention of diners across the city with his upscale, laser-focused interpretation of Vietnamese cuisine. A rotating seasonal “grand tasting menu” serves as Dang’s platform to explore the intricacies of regional Vietnamese dishes, as well as their relationship to cuisine from Thailand, Japan, and China. A French-Vietnamese tasting menu, for example, includes duck confit with roasted shallots and coconut emulsion, as well as garlic butter poached prawns and snow crab claws.
A sleek embodiment of a polished neighborhood restaurant, S.K.Y. gained a reputation in Chicago for its distinctive Asian influences, but over time diners have discovered there’s much more to this restaurant’s story. Chef and restaurateur Stephen Gillanders (Apolonia, Valhalla) and his team deliver a deceptively effortless and moderately priced tasting menu with dishes like buttery grilled octopus Meunier and dry-aged lamb with black pepper glaze.
James Beard-nominated Duck Inn is another in a long list of wonderful neighborhood restaurants. And while it’s perfectly great to grab an Italian beef and beer, the restaurant’s capabilities are more than what a typical beef stand offers. That’s not a knock, but there’s only so much our street food vendors can accomplish in small kitchens. At Duck Inn, the power move is to order the signature rotisserie duck. Chef Kevin Hickey even has his own duck press for the endeavor which is served with duck-fat potatoes and a reduction. Get it with truffles and foie gras (sorry LA and New York) for a decadent experience. Call ahead to reserve the duck prior because quantities are limited.
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Duck Sel is anything but conventional. It’s a pop-up that hosts about two dinners a month inside an apartment in Edgewater — chef Don Young doesn’t want to give away the location. The exceptionally tight-knit staff outkicks their coverage. No way should a tasting menu produced in a small non-commercial space taste this good. Young’s laid-back demeanor hides a killer intensity. He wants to produce fun and pretty dishes using premium ingredients. He may provide a syringe so diners can inject sauces or have other playful props. These are not gimmicks; they make sense in the context of what he’s trying to accomplish. But jump on reservations. There’s limited space.
Women-fronted tasting menu restaurants are a relative rarity in Chicago, but in Edgewater, Herb chef and owner Patty Neumson has spent a decade carving out a distinctive niche with her upscale Thai restaurant. In place of a lengthy list of dishes, Neumson offers seasonal tasting menu lineups that translate the depth and delicacy of familiar Thai flavor profiles into gorgeous, colorful curries, stews, and dishes loaded with a bounty of fresh herbs and produce. Options include a tasting menu for two and a “chef’s special” tasting menu.
Atelier gave chef Christian Hunter, who in 2023 earned a James Beard nomination in Connecticut, a chance to move to Chicago to take over the Lincoln Square space that once held Michelin-starred Elizabeth. Designers could only do so much inside the small space to give Atelier its own identity, but Hunter (now a co-owner) and founder Tim Lacey have forged a bold new direction. Hunter’s menu is light and strikes the right notes of nostalgia (the semolina cheese curds are marvelous). Lacey brings a unique intensity to the drink list and the best non-alcoholic pairing in the city.
Chef Norman Fenton, formerly of shuttered tasting menu spot Brass Heart, has revived the Uptown space with Cariño, a petite 20-seat restaurant where he seeks to channel the hidden retreats of Mexico City. In addition to a 12-to-16-course tasting menu, a lineup bursting with modernist takes on aguachile, tetelas, and tostadas, Fenton, a Schwa alum, has also unfurled a late-night taco omakase featuring eight to 12 iterations of his wildest taco dreams. Recent submissions include taco de suadero with a side of jardín and truffle quesadillas made on a stone comal.
Chicago’s only Persian tasting menu restaurant is a warm and friendly and has a vegetarian option. The smoky eggplant dish is a highlight, as is the lamb chop, which evokes the feeling of sinking your teeth into a lamb kebob at neighborhood staple Reza’s. There are enough surprises on this affordable tasting menu to keep coming back.
A quaint retreat with singular views of Lincoln Park’s North Pond Nature Sanctuary, this restaurant is prized among diners seeking to mark a special occasion in a subtly elegant style. Its building, created in 1912 as a warming shelter for ice skaters, has undergone a significant redesign guided by the Arts and Crafts tradition. North Pond draws on this same organic, ornamental approach with seasonal tasting menus featuring courses like bacon-wrapped rabbit loin (roasted artichoke, pine nut brittle) and coffee-rubbed wagyu striploin with beef cheek beignet and apple butter jus. The restaurant sits in the middle of Lincoln Park — the actual park, not the neighborhood. There’s no other restaurant like it.
Chicago native Jenner Tomaska left the Alinea Group to open his own restaurant, a sleek corner space in Lincoln Park that also has a bar component. Esme gives life to an avant-garde tasting menu that showcases a diverse list of vendors and often brings an aspect of visual art to the space. Tomaska and his wife Katrina Bravo are keen on community, and that’s not some fuel for a cringe-worthy meme. They showcase local artists and partner with community groups to use their platform genuinely. Tomaska’s menu comes with a little bit of a mad scientist vibe. Enjoy it.
Chicago’s omakase scene has grown significantly since 2018, when chef Otto Phan decamped to Chicago from Austin, Texas to open Kyoten, his eight-seat sushi haunt in Logan Square. That shift is due in large part to Phan himself, who brings his live-wire energy to his pursuit of the highest craftsmanship possible. That opportunity, however, comes at a price, as this is one of the city’s spendier tasting menus.
Arguably the crown jewel in James Beard Award-winning Boka Restaurant Group’s pantheon of Chicago restaurants, Boka has reigned over Lincoln Park for nearly 10 years and secured a Michelin star under the steady guidance of lauded chef Lee Wolen, a veteran of Eleven Madison Park. Noted for his thoughtful treatment of produce and proteins (think black truffle roasted chicken and grilled lion’s mane mushrooms with lapsang souchong), Wolen offers an eight-course tasting menu.
Alinea, one of two Chicago restaurants with a full three stars from Michelin, is one of the most important restaurants in America, with a tasting menu that blends technique and art. This is the prototype entry that posh diners point to when saying meals are more than sustenance. Chef Grant Achatz attempts to challenge customers with unorthodox presentations, exotic ingredients, and interactive dishes unlike anything Americans have tried. When the dishes land, they leave an impression. When the dishes don’t, they also leave an impression. The menu, one of the most expensive in the country, usually delivers and is the one most cited as a bucketlist restaurant.
Schwa isn’t for everyone. It’s the once-underground punk rock band that’s broken through the mainstream with a few singles in a sea of U2 and John Mayer. It’s flirted with a major label but wants to stay indie. The restaurant, another tasting menu option, was founded by Michael Carlson, and when it opened in 2005, its approach to service, with the kitchen staff also acting as the service staff, was a breath of fresh air. The 26-seater features a minimalist interior, with the thinking of pouring all the resources into ingredients. One of its most popular dishes is a quail egg ravioli.
Coach House is the tasting menu sibling to Lilac Tiger located behind it in Wicker Park. Whereas Lilac Tiger — originally Wazwan — is a bar with a casual menu, Coach House takes a maximalist approach to Indian food with delicate presentations and bold flavors. Chef Zubair Mohajir is South Indian, but there’s no mention of Kerala or Goa. Mohajir’s roots are Muslim, so there’s a different approach and exploration of ingredients that many Americans don’t associate with Indian food. The tasting menu may feature a top-flight momo or bread service that blends India flatbreads with a Midwestern relish platter. Mohajir is a James Beard-nominated chef and takes chances. A newer menu blends Mexican and Persian/Indian cuisine.
Chef Brian Jupiter and Pioneer Tavern Group have found success with Frontier, a neighborhood restaurant and bar that indulges Jupiter’s Louisiana roots. For folks wanting to splurge, the option comes from full-animal service where customers call days in advance and arrange for suckling pigs, goats, lamb, or racks of tomahawk steaks for group dining. Call the restaurant for availability, but a meal to feed 8 to 12, which comes with sides, will cost around $800. It’s a great value for a unique experience.
Kasama is the world’s first Michlein-starred Filipino restaurant and has set off a Fil-Am food boom in Chicago. While the long lines in the morning are for the cafe, the dinner service is a wonderful tasting menu that challenges perceptions. The lumpia course is a masterclass in textures. The adobo squab might be the most delicious squab ever prepared. The items are thoughtful and are a departure. Many folks may feel elevated Filipino food just means using expensive ingredients and Lola’s recipes. That’s not the case with Kasama, which tests boundaries with exceptional service. Its owners never intended to open a tasting menu restaurant, but the pandemic forced their hand. Chicago is lucky to have it.
Jeong grew out of a suburban food court stall, with chef Dave Park’s food drawing diners from all over the Chicago area. Now settled in West Town, Park and partner Jennifer Tran have created a very formal space allowing Park to dazzle by playing with Korean ingredients and flavors. Park is a precise chef delivering favorites such as a cured salmon with yuza, dwenjang, creme fraiche, and crispy rice pearls. It’s a thoughtful experience.
Indienne is Chicago’s only Michelin-starred Indian restaurant, a tasting menu effort from Rooh founder chef Sujan Sarkar. Sarkar has created a breezy menu (which has a vegetarian option) that takes familiar Indian flavors and presents them uniquely. There’s a canapé course, pani puri, and more. It’s not meat-heavy, and that might turn off folks equating meat with satisfaction. That helps to keep the menu prices low. For folks who don’t need the cliched wagyu beef course, Indienne is a delight and a way to explore a different side of Indian cuisine.
Rick Bayless’s flagship River North restaurant is reservation only and has helped redefine Mexican cuisine in America. Bayless is Chicago’s most famous chef and has meticulously researched Mexican food, reaching out to other chefs. He takes his role as a cultural ambassador seriously, even though his lineage isn’t Mexican. Many come into the restaurant with a chip on their shoulders, wanting to dislike Bayless, and while he’s not perfect, he’s managed to delegate kitchen responsibilities to chef de cuisine Meagan O’Connor and pastry chef Jennifer Enyart (the latter was a Bayless alum and left to open Dos Urban in Logan Square; she and her cake wizardry are back in Downtown Chicago). Even if you have your apprehensions about Bayless, it’s worth a visit if not to have a true understanding of what you supposedly dislike. You’re likely going to leave surprised.
Lettuce Entertain You has gone big on the second floor of the St. Regis Chicago, a 101-story luxury hotel and skyscraper that soars above Navy Pier on Upper Wacker Drive. Tre Dita focuses on Tuscan cuisine, with fresh pasta and beef curated by star LA chef Evan Funke. Funke abhors tasting menus. He wants to stuff you with carbs and protein, but only the best. The space is blissful, among the most beautiful in Chicago with gorgeous views. Though the restaurant only recently opened, Tre Dita is the type of spot that is worth seeking out. There’s also a bar with a separate menu if a splurge is too much.
Curtis Duffy is one of the most respected chefs in the city, the subject of the documentary For Grace, and a chef who has Michelin stars tattooed on his wrist. With Ever, Duffy and co-owner Michael Muser have created a cavernous restaurant with exceptional service and a blissful menu that allows Duffy’s imagination to come to life. This is another bucketlist restaurant, but one that restaurant industry members save up to visit. They have that much respect for Ever’s staff and want to experience the theatrics and attention to detail. Yes, it was featured in The Bear.
Oriole isn’t as stuffy as most fine dining restaurants and there’s a focus on attentive service that’s not overbearing. Chef Noah Sandoval has helmed a Michelin-starred restaurant that is a bit more playful with the tasting menu than most of its ilk and price range that have come before; the menu is described as contemporary American. But the only limit is Sandoval’s imagination.
Perhaps Chicago’s premier sushi omakase, Mako offers a 15-course menu with some of the freshest fish to be flown to Chicago inside a sleek and small space in the West Loop. There aren’t a lot of curveballs with the omakase, and that’s OK. Let the ingredients speak for themselves.
Smyth was upgraded in 2023 as Michelin awarded the restaurant with its maximum three-star rating. The food from John and Karen Shields is a tasting menu that can only be conceived through close relationships with farms and a thorough understanding of how that would play inside a restaurant where diners have high expectations. One of the best items on the current menu is king crab that’s been shelled and once again wrapped in a new shell made of beeswax. Why would they take the extra step? The beeswax adds a pleasant aroma and an additional sweetness to the crab. And it’s much easier to break versus the crab’s original shell. This is the type of thoughtfulness that Smyth brings to the table consistently.
Helmed by the dynamic one-two punch of chefs and spouses David and Anna Posey, Elske leads diners down the garden path of lighthearted Scandinavian-influenced cuisine with a helping of charming, contemporary aesthetics. Below the surface, however, lies a deeply serious commitment to easily overlooked elements like fermentation and wine pairings. There’s an a la carte selection, but for a true look inside the couple’s vision, opt for the set menu, which features courses like duck liver tart with salted ramp and confit cod with charred squash and enokis. Ana Posey is a 2024 James Beard nominee and art school graduate. Her desserts could be worth the visit alone.
Bonyeon comes from a tradition of Korean meat omakases, a type of restaurant that showcases different cuts of quality meat with different marinades. It’s uncommon in America with the most famous being Cote in New York. In Chicago, Bonyeon shares ownership with two neighboring restaurants, Michelin-starred Omakase Yume (also worth a splurge) and Tengoku Aburiya. At Bonyeon, diners will feast on beef from wagyu Japan and America from different farms. A particularly solid time is wagyu slathered with thinly sliced onions. The chef has been perfecting this item for decades. These are small courses that won’t overpower like a typical American steakhouse. Quality meat satisfies better, so there’s no need for a huge slab of meat to fill you up. The chefs cook in front of the customers.
There’s a kind of dour pretension generally associated with fine dining that’s become the subject of several cinematic takedowns as of late — think Ralph Fiennes as the executive chef from hell in the 2022 thriller The Menu. That narrative, however, falls away completely at EL ideas where chef Phil Foss and his team prove that there’s room for joy in avant-garde cuisine. Secreted away in Douglass Park, the restaurant exudes an unassuming Midwestern-ness (Foss is a Milwaukee native) with a well-lit dining room and wide-open kitchen where diners can sidle up for a mid-service chat. That sense of fun translates to the tasting menu in courses like tzatziki with sunchoke chips and piquant toasted garlic. It’s served sans utensils, which means everyone in the room is left to lick their plates with abandon. Foss is also famed for his French Fries & Frosty, a dessert inspired by his daughters’ habit of dipping fries into their Wendy’s shakes. A marvel of molecular gastronomy in a milkshake glass, it’s a hot-and-cold melange of crunchy potatoes, steaming potato leek soup, and nitro-poached vanilla ice cream.
Over in Pilsen, far from the bustling sidewalks of Asia on Argyle, chef Thai Dang has captured the attention of diners across the city with his upscale, laser-focused interpretation of Vietnamese cuisine. A rotating seasonal “grand tasting menu” serves as Dang’s platform to explore the intricacies of regional Vietnamese dishes, as well as their relationship to cuisine from Thailand, Japan, and China. A French-Vietnamese tasting menu, for example, includes duck confit with roasted shallots and coconut emulsion, as well as garlic butter poached prawns and snow crab claws.
A sleek embodiment of a polished neighborhood restaurant, S.K.Y. gained a reputation in Chicago for its distinctive Asian influences, but over time diners have discovered there’s much more to this restaurant’s story. Chef and restaurateur Stephen Gillanders (Apolonia, Valhalla) and his team deliver a deceptively effortless and moderately priced tasting menu with dishes like buttery grilled octopus Meunier and dry-aged lamb with black pepper glaze.
James Beard-nominated Duck Inn is another in a long list of wonderful neighborhood restaurants. And while it’s perfectly great to grab an Italian beef and beer, the restaurant’s capabilities are more than what a typical beef stand offers. That’s not a knock, but there’s only so much our street food vendors can accomplish in small kitchens. At Duck Inn, the power move is to order the signature rotisserie duck. Chef Kevin Hickey even has his own duck press for the endeavor which is served with duck-fat potatoes and a reduction. Get it with truffles and foie gras (sorry LA and New York) for a decadent experience. Call ahead to reserve the duck prior because quantities are limited.