Restaurant listings are culled from the Reader Restaurant Finder, an online database of more than 4,200 Chicago-area restaurants. Restaurants are reviewed by staff, contributors, and (where noted) individual Reader Restaurant Raters. Though reviewers try to reflect the Raters’ input, reviews should be considered one person’s opinion; the Raters’ collective opinions are best expressed in the numbers. Complete searchable listings, Raters’ comments, and information on how to become a Rater are at chicagoreader.com/restaurantfinder.
Passersby may mistake this stylish storefront for a boutique or gallery: the mannequins perched in the front windows are all wearing haute couture. Inside, the waitstaff are mostly models, but the food is the real deal, a refreshingly straightforward menu using mostly imported Italian ingredients and fresh cheese and pasta. The mozzarella on the caprese salad, fresh and creamy and drizzled with an aromatic herbed olive oil, is just one of the things shipped over from the mother country. The pizzas don’t have any designer elements and don’t need them; margherita, quattro formaggi, and napoletana (anchovies and oregano) all come on a thin, deliciously chewy crust. The rest of the menu changes weekly, but on one visit there was an assortment of homemade pastas for the first course: tagliolini with fresh shrimp and zucchini, ziti with tomato sauce and ricotta, a rich but al dente risotto with porcini mushrooms and asparagus. The limited selection of entrees one night included veal in lemon sauce and a sole dish with shrimp, tomato, and capers. —Laura Levy Shatkin
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Ina Pinkney is one of the movers and shakers behind the Green Chicago Restaurant Co-op, a loose consortium of restaurateurs who have put their collective buying power behind drawing green products and packaging into the Chicago market. At her cheerful namesake restaurant, brick walls are brightened with salmon trim and aqua wainscoting and tables are topped with white butcher paper and salt-and-pepper shakers from Pinkney’s eclectic collection. Entrees are comfort-food favorites like fried chicken, chicken potpie, and meat loaf; there’s also a BLT with avocado and a grilled cheese with Gruyere and Swiss. The breakfast menu includes scrapple with black beans and corn, four kinds of pancakes, homemade granola with dried cranberries, omelets with potatoes, and a vegetable hash. The bread comes fresh from Labriola, the coffee from Intelligentsia. Perhaps best of all, the place is a cell-phone-free zone. —Laura Levy Shatkin
$$Indian/Pakistani | Lunch: Monday-Saturday; Dinner: seven days | Open late: Friday & Saturday till 11
Province161 N. Jefferson | 312-669-9900
On a busy night diners can wait upwards of an hour to knock elbows with their neighbors at communal tables at executive chef Paul Kahan’s latest venture, attended to by (mostly) solicitous servers who deliver platters of creamy La Quercia ham, oddments of offal, and peasant classics like cassoulet and boudin blanc in occasionally haphazard fashion. But on balance the food, under chef de cuisine Brian Huston, is pretty great. The menu changes daily but stays relentlessly on its snout-to-tail message. Rillettes were a rich jam of concentrated pork fat and flavor; dense, savory short ribs were brought into balance with a light, cheery dressing of watermelon and cherry tomatoes. Frites topped with a poached organic egg would’ve made a decadent breakfast. A briny Penn Cove oyster, one of six varieties on the menu that day, was silkenly sublime. And the pork rinds were revelatory, lighter than air yet still chewy, hit with an invigorating splash of malt vinegar. The extensive beer list is lovingly curated, full of Belgian rarities and international cult faves. The best of several meals I took at the Publican came on a Sunday, when the menu’s given the boot in favor of a four-course prix fixe meal ($45 per person, served family style). That night the room was quiet and relaxed and the menu sanely, gracefully balanced: a bright, clean salad of persimmon, avocado, grapefruit, and bitter treviso, a plate of delicate roasted pompano, and a simple platter piled with rich, tender pork shoulder, roast chicken, a coarse, addictive cotechino sausage spiked with nutmeg, and a bit of braised lamb’s tongue. Our server also happened to be the beer buyer, Michael McAvena; announcing he was bored, he plied us with samples. —Martha Bayne
F 8.7 | S 8.4 | A 9.6 | $$$$ (9 reports)American Contemporary/Regional | Lunch: Monday-Friday; Dinner: Monday-Saturday | Closed Sunday
