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.
Three Pineapples
When you last left Joe Flamm—a little more than a year ago—the broad-shouldered chef had successfully shepherded his new restaurant through its first few months of opening…
There can be little question of the buoyant spirit Erick Williams has imbued his restaurant (and the wider community) with, but the nature of Virtue’s execution—and its ability to successfully extend that hospitality more broadly—stand ripe for analysis.
By offering diners the freedom to define their own evening, by welcoming and caring for them expertly across all levels of indulgence, the Poseys construct that sense of hygge. Elske should serve as a model of what a boundary-pushing, community-oriented restaurant should be.
You dub Andrés “the Alinea killer,” and you attest that one sprawling meal at Bazaar Meat—enjoyed at total leisure, with total warmth, and built, plate by plate, in accordance with one’s personal taste—negates any need to go to any of Achatz’s concepts ever again.
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.”
Kasama is not one of the “best restaurants in the world,” nor is it one of the best in the country, but it is already one of Chicago’s best. Can it stay true to its vision as the accolades continue to pour in?
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.
Understanding Elina’s
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.