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Restaurants Overview

However you judge a city's dining scene -- by ethnic diversity, breadth and depth of high-quality establishments, or nationally prominent chefs -- Chicago ranks as one of the nation's finest restaurant towns. Here you'll find everything from innovative hot spots to lovingly maintained traditional establishments. Chicago's more than 7,000 restaurants range from those ranked among the best in the country -- and priced accordingly -- to simple storefront ethnic places and old-fashioned, unpretentious pubs serving good food at modest prices.

Chicago's most sophisticated cooking, once clustered neatly downtown (with the notable exceptions of Charlie Trotter's and Arun's), is increasingly busting the confines of the Loop. Now many of the city's most exciting meals require an outing to Wicker Park (Spring, Mirai Sushi), nearby West Loop (Nine, Blackbird, Avec), or the north's Lincoln Square (Bistro Campagne).

There's a rational price-geography correlation in Chicago: the closer you eat to downtown, the more you pay. But venture into the residential neighborhoods and you not only dine well but reasonably. Bistrot Margot in the Old Town section of Lincoln Park, for example, upholds downtown standards but holds the line on prices. Farther afield, you find personable places that do not rely on the expense-account crowd to survive, such as La Petite Folie to the south, Erwin to the north, and plenty of spots in between -- all well worth seeking out.