📍Added in May: Rafa Esparza and Anthony Baier’s pop-up, Fafo, occupies the night with Michelin-level lysergia at this West Loop cocktail spot. Seemingly simple bar food subverts the paradigm: makrut lime–pink peppercorn–citrus peel–buttermilk-battered bloomin’ onion; grilled cheese infused with Malört, Chicago’s notorious wormwood spirit; and late-night appearances by freaks of yore, like crispy-soft, cheddar-dusted churro frites. Tasty? Weird? Weirdly tasty? F*ck around and find out.

📍Added in May: Ethan Lim’s eight-stool sandwich shop became the toughest table in town when he launched an 11-course fine dining Family Meal tribute to his parents. The current menu leans into Chinese-Khmer connections but still features his legendary whole Cambodian fried chicken with all the fixings. Bookings go fast. While you idle on the waitlist, you can pre-order the CFC sandwich to go—the first spark of Lim’s stardom.

📍Added in May: If you think you don’t like gin, this chummy library of liquid botanicals will change your mind. The menu changes every three months with a fresh mix of cocktails designed for every palate. Polished hangover inhibitors are currently flexing an East Asian profile (fire chicken scallion pancake, nuoc cham steak salad, miso caramel beignets), but are always anchored by perfect frites, and a warm Tollhouse cookie giveaway at midnight.

📍Added in May: Solomon and Selamawit Abebe run this butcher shop–market–restaurant–banquet hall like a figurative gursha—the generous act of hand-feeding a delicious morsel to a companion. Here, that’s sublimely enjoyed as a bite of tiré siga: fresh, raw beef swiped through berbere-spiked awaze sauce and searing senafitch mustard. The full array of meaty and meatless stews are lovingly scratch-made, as is the 100% teff flour injera flatbread that serves as their delivery vehicle.

📍Added in May: This blue-collar dive has been fueling city workers and day shifters with hearty, homestyle lunch specials for a half century-plus. Mary Stark has gone on to her reward, but her legendary meatloaf still runs on Wednesdays, as does corned beef on Thursdays and fish fry on Fridays. Nighttime, a multiplicity of pop-ups heat up Mary’s kitchen (including a weekly one I curate), slinging everything from braised short rib udon to birria grilled cheese.

A veteran of Chicago’s meatiest kitchens, Bojan Milicevic applied his skills to the peppery foods of his southern Serbian hometown, sourcing Midwestern ingredients to modernize classics like stuffed cabbage and the discus-sized, bacon-studded burger pljeskavica. By day, it’s a detour-meriting sandwich shop centered around housemade charcuterie, while fruit-brandy-focused cocktails set a swanky dinner scene. Don’t sleep on the smoked potatoes with charred scallions and feta.

Little Palestine, aka Bridgeview, is the heart of the largest Palestinian community in America, and this former-fast-food-joint-turned-opulent-oasis is its pleasure center. Wood-grilled meats and seafood are the celebrated gems here, but treasures are all over the sprawling menu of mezes, salads, and sandwiches, such as makdous (oil-cured, walnut-stuffed baby eggplants) or arayes (crispy, griddled beef-lamb or Syrian cheese–stuffed pita).

The self-described “control freak” behind this brand-new ramen-ya spent a decade methodically studying his craft—and regularly selling out periodic pop-ups within seconds. The resulting tentacular housemade noodles and perfectly balanced broths are still the object of intense devotion, but in his long-awaited brick-and-mortar, it’s a little bit easier to score a bowl. With just two soup-based and two dry varieties, obsession and passion are evident in the bowl.

It isn’t easy to settle on a favorite restaurant. But whenever I get that impossible question, this acclaimed goat specialist is front of mind. Charisma runs in the blood of the Zaragoza family, from whose ancestral hometown of La Barca, Jalisco, comes birria tatemada: slow-“toasted” chivo meat, served with tangy consommé, pressed-to-order corn tortillas, and a chunky red salsa. Ask for a surtido and watch the cleaver-wielding birrierio assemble a sampler of lovingly tended caprid flesh.

Stateside, there’s nothing else in the Western Hemisphere like this dedicated all-beef Japanese-Korean omakase from a sushi pioneer. Sangtae Park and his chefs grill dry-aged American Wagyu, Japanese Kobe, and prime-grade Black Angus morsels before your eyes, supplemented by artfully plated dishes employing off bits and obscure cuts. It’s 12 courses honoring the ancient Korean aesthetic of the bovine, nose-to-tail maxim: 일두백미, or “one head with 100 tastes.”