Restaurants

The Chicago area’s incredible variety of international restaurants has expanded over the last decade to include a growing number of eateries that serve Central Asian cuisine. Anyone with a taste for hearty, homestyle food and an adventurous spirit can undertake a tour of that cuisine here in Chicago.

Johnny Clark began exploring Ukrainian cuisine during the pandemic and after the Russian invasion, and has now opened a Ukrainian restaurant that he named after his grandma.

Javauneeka Jacobs, the sous chef at Rick Bayless' Frontera Grill, won the first round of a Julia-themed competition on the Food Network show Chopped. She told us what it's like to be on the high-stress show.

The Jean Banchet Awards are local food industry awards that often spotlight talent overlooked by national and international publications. See the nominees in twelve categories this year.

For a loaf of bread from Publican Quality Bread to reach you, wheat must be grown and harvested and sent to a stone mill to be ground into flour, which then goes through a process as long as 60 hours at the bakery. 

Chicagoan Cam Brenson has taken to TikTok to share his journey of attempting to eat the cuisine of nearly every country without ever leaving the Chicago area.

Onam is a harvest festival traditionally celebrated with a vegetarian feast known as sadya in the south Indian state of Kerala. Avondale's Thattu serves Keralite food, and hosts a sadya. “People are not aware of the diversity of Indian cuisine,” says the owner.

It can be difficult for small businesses such as restaurants to access bank loans, but regulation crowdfunding allows supporters to literally invest in a business, with the chance of making a small profit in the process.

Two cousins opened the first Eggholic, a restaurant featuring a distinctive style of Indian food focusing on eggs, in Schaumburg in 2018. By the end of this year, there will be 28 Eggholics across the country. How did they do it?

Early every morning, the skilled bakers of Chicago’s Chiu Quon Bakery prep dough, cook fillings, shape breads, steam and bake buns, and carry out all the other myriad steps required to prepare the over 100 different baked goods and foods made and offered daily at the bakery.

At his Chicago restaurant Hermosa, Ethan Lim offers Cambodian-inspired sandwiches during the day and a "Family Meal" multi-course private dining menu at night. He's the subject of a new American Masters profile. 

“God bless the pioneers of the Indian community who brought Indian food [to the United States], but we’ve gotten settled into this greatest hits world,” says Zubair Mohajir, the chef behind the buzzy Wicker Park restaurant Wazwan. 

Fatima Zabiha Foods was started by a Pakistani immigrant who realized that "halal" meat in the U.S. was ill-defined. He wanted meat that conformed to his expectations. Now Chicago is a leading provider of halal meat, and Fatima continues to grow.

Devon Quinn operates not just the Avondale restaurant Eden and the various catering businesses of The Paramount Group, but also grows a wide variety of plants for their use in a greenhouse. "It’s just about that connection from earth to plate,” he says. 

Even today there is a huge disparity in the number of women head chefs, but achieving success in the food industry earlier on was even less common. Meet some of the women who influenced Chicago and America's attitudes towards food.