 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
          
|
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| Blackbird 619 West Randolph Street Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 715-0708 | Chicago is more or less the national center for both the elaborate, multicourse Continental joints that serve what some of us have taken to calling Three Hundred Dollar Cuisine and the sort of eye-popping restaurant where the DJ booth is better appointed than the kitchen. Yet Blackbird is a restaurant we're drawn to again and again, not so much for the impeccable Kennedy-era interior (it looks like a particularly hip Greyhound station circa 1962) or the impossibly stylish clientele as for Paul Kahan's finely calibrated cooking. Perhaps more deftly than any other young chef in America today, Kahan has managed to blend his fashionable polyethnic tendencies, a certain French aesthetic, and a Berkeley-style ingredient fetishism into a style that seems international yet tastes absolutely local. Whether you are eating his roasted squab pot-au-feu, his confit salad with duck egg, or his crisply seared walleye with sweet peas and mint, you never forget for a second that you are actually in Chicago. | |||||||||||||||
|
Charlie Trotter's 816 West Armitage Avenue Chicago, Illinois Phone: (773) 248-6228 | In his story "The Aleph," Jorge Luis Borges describes a point in which all other points are contained, a vantage from which every single thing in the world can be seen. And when you are in a certain state of mind, a meal at Charlie Trotter's can seem like the culinary equivalent of the Aleph: foods plucked from every cuisine and every country in the world, impeccably prepared and combined in a way that allows each of them to be seen clearly but stripped of any context other than that of the restaurant. In one meal, you may experience 75 different things — pigs' feet, blood sausage, cannellini beans, yuzu, horseradish, Lucini olive oil — combined in a dozen different dishes; in the next, the flavors may be exactly the same, but the dishes in which they appear will be completely different. In a way, the dizzy floating feeling of Trotter's geography-free universe is appropriate. For what could be a more typical Chicago experience than endlessly circling above O'Hare airport? | |||||||||||||||
| Chicago
Prime Steakhouse 1370 Bank Drive, Schaumburg, Illinois 847-969-9900 | The Chicago Prime Steakhouse is Chicago's prime venue for sizzling charcoal-grilled steaks and garden fresh greens. The restaurant is richly appointed in dark mahogany, glass and marble with high ceilings. They use only the finest grade of US prime beef (Black Angus) that is certified Prime. The Chicago Prime Steakhouse features generous-sized cuts of beef including porterhouse (which tips the scale at 48 ounces), filet mignons, sirloins, T-bones and rib-eye steaks and prime rib of beef. Fresh Atlantic salmon, tuna steak, halibut, and swordfish steak offer seafood options. To accompany your main course, select from an array of side dishes, including double baked potatoes, and freshly-cooked vegetables. When diners order their steaks, ribs and fish, they can watch Chef John Tuttle and his staff work their magic in the open kitchen. While here, don't overlook the Chicago Steakhouse's extensive wine list. Featuring over 150 bottles of wine from around the world and 30 plus available by the glass, it's is gaining a well deserved reputation as the place for wine lovers. Though a wait during the weekend can tip the scale at over an hour, diners can take refuge in it bar. The adjoining bar is a cosy and comfortable place for cocktails and conversation. It's ideal for drinks before or after dinner. | |||||||||||||||
| Mod
Squad 1520 North Damen Avenue Chicago, Illinois Phone: (773-252-1500) | If you stare at a leprechaun-green wall for a while and then knuckle your eyeballs for a second or two, the afterimage dancing across your field of vision may look a lot like the interior of the Chicago restaurant Mod, a bright, DJ-intensive light show of a place. But it's the clean, farm-based cooking of Kelly Courtney that's the real surprise here: Her double-thick pork chops, truck-stop steaks, fried blue lake string beans, and prosciutto and duck egg "ham 'n' eggs" sound like pages from a greasy spoon cookbook, but the execution is more like Chez Panisse. | |||||||||||||||
| NoMi 800 N. Michigan Ave. Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 239-4030 | Located in the new Park Hyatt Chicago, NoMi serves upscale French cuisine with a global twist. The seventh-floor restaurant boasts views of Michigan Avenue and the lake and even has a 50-seat outdoor terrace; the entire restaurant, including the 120-seat main dining room, is designed by Tony Chi. The adjoining lounge features a Wenge wood bar, Bolivian rosewood floors and backless eelskin stools. Chef Sandro Gamba, a finalist in the James Beard Foundation's "Rising Star Chef" award in 2000, has put together an innovative menu that includes sushi/sashimi that is flown in daily, and risotto Milanese (one of Gamba's signature dishes) served with shrimp and clam. For breakfast, Gamba serves a whopper of a meal, inspired by those prepared by his grandmother in France: authentic hot chocolate, baguette, fruit tart brioche and apple compote. | |||||||||||||||
|
Topolobampo 445 North Clark Street Chicago, Illinois Phone: (312) 661-1434 | When we are feeling less than charitable, we sometimes note the pre-Columbian daintiness of the antojitos, the hot-and-sweet notes that seem to punctuate each dish, and the slivers of jicama that Topolobampo serves with its guacamole. But Rick and Deann Bayless have sparked a revolution in Mexican cooking, and Chicago has the healthiest Mexican-restaurant scene in the country, mostly run by Bayless alumni. Largely because of Topolobampo, there are dozens of places to find organic, idiosyncratic Mexican produce now, and Chicagoans may be more knowledgeable about the full range of Mexican cooking than diners anywhere else in the country. This is, as they say, no accident. Because once you've tasted Topolobampo's vibrant moles and quelites soup, there's no turning back. | |||||||||||||||
| MK,
the restaurant 868 N. Franklin St. Chicago, IL Phone: (312) 482-9179 | This soaring skylit loft space (a former paint factory) offers playful contemporary cuisine and just the right mix of comfort and cool. At a discreet table on the mezzanine, diners (like Lenny Kravitz, John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and Sting) eat seared foie gras ($16) and Belgian pommes frites with truffle sauce ($6) while sipping selections from the lofty wine list (3,500-plus bottles, starting at $7 a glass). | |||||||||||||||
| Weber
Grill Restaurant 539 N State Chicago, IL 60611 Phone: (312) 467-9696 | Too cold to grill outside? Out of charcoal? This restaurant cooks your meal -- seafood, burgers, steaks and other conceivably backyard Americana -- on their own kettle grills without the hassle and cleanup. An open kitchen provides diners a great view of the action. The secret to Weber Grill's success? A simple, identifiable menu of steaks, chops and seafood, at prices that are moderate by high-end steakhouse standards. The recognition value of the Weber Grill name, which is virtually synonymous with backyard barbecue, doesn't hurt either. The gimmick here is that just about every dish, even desserts, spends at least some time on a Weber grill (exceptions are the ribs and pork shoulder, cooked on Weber smokers). The open, display kitchen consists mainly of a long line of enormous, stainless-steel Weber Kettles, which are fired up at 7 a.m. and stoked with coals until closing. The all-grill theme is reinforced by a few decorative elements as well: Grill-lid heat lamps, cooking-grate insets in the outdoor patio fence, and of course the bright-red Weber kettles mounted high on the restaurant's exterior corners. | |||||||||||||||
| Check out the best restaurants in your favorite cities:-
| ||||||||||||||||