Chicago Restaurant Week, Billy Sunday’s Reopening, & More Restaurant News

If you want to stay on top of what’s happening with Chicago restaurants and bars right now, you’ve come to the right place. Every week, we’ll be keeping track of the latest openings, reopenings, specials, or any other mildly interesting thing we think you might want to know.

The Latest Restaurant News

• Reservations are now open for Chicago Restaurant Week 2021. It’s running from March 19th to April 4th (yes, we realize this is longer than a week) and this year the restaurants are offering deals on takeout as well as indoor and outdoor dining. If you want to get a head start on making reservations, you can do that here. You can find our top picks here.

• Now that indoor dining is back, restaurants and bars that have been closed since the start of the pandemic are starting to reopen. Among these are Billy Sunday and The Whale in Logan Square (both reopening on March 3rd), the newly remodeled Nick’s Beer Garden in Wicker Park, Strings Ramen in Lakeview and Tao downtown.

• Speaking of indoor dining, the Chicago Restaurant Coalition is holding a Zoom press conference at 2pm on March 1st to encourage city officials to increase indoor dining capacity from 40% (what it is now) to 50%. They’ll also be demanding the allocation of $50 million from the city’s TIF (tax increment finance) surplus to be used for restaurant survival grants. If you want to show support for these two issues, you can sign their petition here.