CHIGuide
The 20 Best Deals For Chicago Restaurant Week
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Chicago Restaurant Week is back from January 19th to February 4th. (Yes, the "week" lasts 17 days). There are over 300 participating restaurants this year, offering multi-course meals for either $25, $42, or $59 dollars. So to help you narrow things down, we made you a list of 20 participating spots we love.
THE DEALS
photo credit: Dan Piotrowski
Esmé normally serves a very expensive 12-course tasting menu. During Restaurant Week, you'll get a pared back version: it's only three courses for $59. Fun things like a giant Flamin’ Hot Cheeto make an appearance, and so do less-fun-sounding-but-still-great dishes like grilled wagyu short rib. Plus, there's the option to add-on from the regular menu.
photo credit: Sandy Noto
One of the best Italian restaurants in the city is offering a $59 four-course family-style dinner. You can choose from dishes like nduja arancini, chicken milanese, and affogato. And because it’s Monteverde, you can count on everything being excellent.
Both locations of Avec have deals we like. The West Loop location offers a three-course $59 dinner and $25 brunch and lunch, and River North is just doing dinner. The menu is the same at both locations and you'll get things like olives, fattoush and kale, chorizo-stuffed dates, chicken kabsa, and rolled baklava.
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Daisy’s in Hyde Park is from the chef behind Virtue (also on this guide), but is a more casual counter-service operation with a full bar, many TVs, and a solid line-up for Restaurant Week. Their $25 lunch option comes with onion rings and a half muffaletta (a party tray of delicious sandwich-ness), and a $42 dinner option includes half a chicken, biscuits, red beans, and rice, plus seafood gumbo.
The Korean-American food is consistently amazing at this Avondale spot. Parachute’s $59 four-course Restaurant Week dinner is a great chance to try things like excellent seafood pancakes, Korean fried chicken, japchae ddukbokki, and refreshing golbaengi muchim.
This hyped-up West Loop spot has been booked before it opened, which isn’t surprising considering it’s from a popular Top Chef winner and in a popular neighborhood. But the food matches the hype: Rose Mary is a great restaurant, and for the first time ever, participating in Restaurant Week. The three-course, $59 dinner includes a fantastic seasonally-prepared stracciatella, cacio e pepe, lamb, and a layered chocolate and honey cake.
photo credit: Demera
This Uptown spot is one of our favorite Ethiopian restaurants in the city, and their injera, doro wat, and lega tibs are particularly excellent. They're offering both lunch and dinner deals, with tasting platters for two as the main course. It’s the best way to try a little of everything, and nothing will disappoint.
photo credit: Kim Kovacik
Every dish at this casual Italian restaurant in Humboldt Park has some kind of creative twist. Meatballs filled with melted scamorza offer the benefits of a Juicy Lucy without the risk of third-degree burns, and a deconstructed “lasagna” is made with handmade garlic mafaldine, whipped ricotta, and mushroom bolognese. Both dishes, among others, are available on the $59 Restaurant Week dinner menu at Segnatore.
There are so many excellent dishes on Saigon Sisters’ $59 three-course Restaurant Week dinner that you should consider visiting this West Loop spot several times. There's bun cha hanoi, whole branzino, lamb luc lac, octopus with squid ink rice, banana brown butter cake, and coconut flan.
Asador Bastian is a Spanish steakhouse in a 19th-century River North townhouse. It’s elegantly low-key but not stuffy, and normally very expensive (you’d probably spend at least $100 on the beef alone). And while there’s no steak on the Restaurant Week menu (and you’ll have to eat at the bar), you can get a tortilla espanola, salad, and a Txuleton burger or basque sea bass for $59.
photo credit: Sandy Noto
Unlike the other Daisy’s on this guide (which is only doing lunch), Daisies in Logan Square has a $59 four-course dinner. The Restaurant Week menu includes some standout dishes, like the potted carrots to start, and six different pasta options. Go with two friends so you can try everything in each course.
This Southern restaurant down the street from Daisy's Po' Boy has a great deal for Restaurant Week. Virtue in Hyde Park has a three-course dinner for $59, and you get to choose from things like fried green tomatoes, black kale salad, shrimp and crawfish and grits, jambalaya, red velvet cake, and banana pudding. Which, frankly, are very hard choices to make.
There are a handful of restaurants that we visit during our “off” hours, and Sushi-san is on that list. They’re offering lunch, plus a $42 or $59 four-course dinner for Restaurant Week. Dinner includes your choice of starter, maki, a main dish like short rib curry sizzling rice, or some sushi and sashimi. There will be mochi for dessert, too.
Tanta's Peruvian menu incorporates regional specialties such as anticuchos and classic cebiches, which is what you’ll find on the Restaurant Week menu at this River North spot. The $59 four-course dinner includes shrimp and octopus cebiche, Berkshire pork with chimichurri, or arroz con pollo.
One of our favorite restaurants happens to be vegan, and they're offering a $42 or $59 dinner for Restaurant Week. You get to choose from dishes like plum and celery ceviche, yuca gnocchi, and vegetable pot pie. Everything is gluten-free, many things are raw, and we've never had a bad dish, so go ahead and pick with confidence.
Thanks to its funk and soul soundtrack, delicious food, and long wine list, we already had plenty of reasons to hang out at Bronzeville Winery for as long as possible. Now you can add their brunch and dinner Restaurant Week options to the growing list. The $25 Sunday brunch includes a single entree like chicken and waffles, while the $59 dinner gets you a three-course meal with a garam masala roasted half chicken as the main event.
photo credit: Tengoku Aburiya
Tengoku Aburiya in the West Loop is more casual than its expensive sister restaurant Omakase Yume, but it has similarly great sushi. And while the nigiri, sashimi, and maki are all reasonably priced any day of the year, the four-course $59 Restaurant Week dinner is an excellent deal, too.
This (very) busy West Loop Italian spot isn’t going to blow your mind with creativity (it’s mainly pizza, pasta, and a handful of entrees), but the food is great. And this year, Alla Vita is doing a $25 lunch and a $59 dinner for Restaurant Week. Both menus have some of the best dishes here, like arancini, rigatoni alla vodka, and their magically crispy chicken parmesan.
The decision to go to Dell Rooster in West Town is always a good one. This isn’t just because this all-day Latin American restaurant has incredible food (and it does) but because it works for all sorts of situations. They're doing a $42 dinner for Restaurant Week, featuring options like oxtail sitting on fried sweet plantains (an example of a shared plate that shouldn’t be shared), and skirt steak with morita sauce.
This Vietnamese restaurant in Pilsen has a $59 per person family-style dinner (minimum two people) with three shareable courses. You'll get to eat snacks like papaya salad, mains like chicken curry, plus coconut rice pudding with whipped chocolate mousse.