After spending time with two concepts that tickled the national press in 2023, you turn your attention to a restaurant that—having opened at the tail end of last year—seems poised to do the same in 2024.
Japanese
Jinsei Motto forms a valuable addition to Chicago’s sushi scene. It is the approachable, irreverent entry point to the genre, and one that—with such a clear, undeluded sense of self—you find rather refreshing.
Chicagoans need to beware that the experience offered at Sushi by Scratch Restaurants today is a pale facsimile of the version Phillip Frankland Lee put on at opening, but there is still some fun to be had.
With LEYE’s luxe sushi spot recently celebrating its first birthday, the time seems ripe for you to pay the concept a visit and test its intention of being “the best omakase in Chicago.”
With your hundredth visit looming in early 2023, the time seems ripe to step back, reflect, and review the creative output that has flowed ceaselessly from Ada Street’s colossus of seasonal American cuisine.
Kyōten “2.0” is a restaurant of the very highest caliber that, as an ever-evolving human drama rooted in the rhythm of nature, can rightfully be labelled “art.”
Oriole reopened in July of 2021 with all the promise of a new experience in an improved space. Though already ensconced among Chicago’s most elite chefs, Noah Sandoval chose to pursue–and fulfill–a grander expression of his vision. The chef unveiled Oriole “2.0,” and you think that moment provides the perfect opportunity to finally engage more deeply with his work.
You cannot say you have eaten at Le Francais or Charlie Trotter’s in their prime, but you feel no fear in saying Smyth is the greatest restaurant Chicago has ever seen. And, by all accounts, the Shieldses are only getting started.
Kyōten is one of few restaurants you have ever visited that feels unmistakably “alive.” Phan and friends invite you to become a part of their story, to write your own chapter with them. You can trust that they will do everything possible to please you in your time together, and they succeed at doing so in a manner that Chicago has never quite seen before.
In the age of airborne viral transmission, the relationship between “server” and “served” has never been more consequential and, ironically, impersonal.