As we settle into a new year, it’s time to prepare for a great Chicago culinary tradition: Chicago Restaurant Week.
This year’s 17-day event will see more than 470 restaurants from around town participating, from award-winning institutions to newly opened spots to local favorites. Restaurants will offer prix fixe brunch, lunch and dinner menus, ranging from $30 to $60.
Here are six menus that we’re excited to try. Note that, oftentimes, restaurants require full party participation, allow no substitutions and the portion sizes may be smaller than the regular menu. Make sure to snag a reservation early, as slots can fill up quickly.
Chicago Restaurant Week runs Jan. 24-Feb. 9. The full list of participating restaurants and their menus is available at choosechicago.com/chicago-restaurant-week.
— Kayla Samoy, food editor
Kama
Kama in Wicker Park — as well as its parent location, Kama Bistro in suburban La Grange — has a mouthwatering menu lined up for Restaurant Week that showcases the deep, rich flavors of Indian cuisine.
Kama’s $30 lunch menu is offered from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It begins with several flatbread choices, including one with goat cheese, tomato garlic confit and eggplant bharta, which is traditionally a sautéed mash mix of eggplant, tomatoes, onions and herbs. If not flatbread, you can instead pick from crispy chili potatoes, masala grilled cheese with makhani harissa chili dip, pea and potato samosa or a classic aloo tikka chaat.
Next, select one of their colorful mains for lunch. Options are shrimp and grits with the volume turned up: black tiger prawns, mint aioli, tomato harissa and upma, one of my favorite winter comfort foods, as the “grits.” Down the list is lamb tagliatelle and a curry bowl with the option of chicken tikka or house-made paneer served with a tomato reduction, daal, rice and naan. Lastly: Chole bhature — another quintessential Indian dish with spicy chickpeas and a crispy, fluffy deep-fried bread. Dessert is gulab jamun (warm, soft, sweet-soaked round dumplings) or ras malai (spongy, soft with flavors of rose and cardamom and pistachio).
For dinner, the restaurant’s $45 menu has four starters to pick from, five mains, including two additional premium upgrade options, and three dessert options.
Starters include: sweet potato chaat, crispy chili potatoes, Goan mussels curry and chicken or paneer lemon tadka. The main events are loaded, too: ghee roasted cauliflower, paneer ravioli, shrimp and grits, lamb chop masala or chicken/paneer tikka masala. For $13 extra, you can try the sous vide beef short rib, and for $10 more the lamb shank vindaloo.
Of the three desserts — bourbon gulab jamun, kulfi ice cream and coconut kheer brûlée — the latter already has my heart. Creamy coconut rice pudding with toasted coconut and candied pecans? Yum.
1560 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-904-7640, kamabistro.com
— Zareen Syed
Kayao
The Peruvian fusion restaurant that opened last summer in Old Town is doing brunch and dinner service for its first Restaurant Week, with vegetarian options on both menus.
On the $30 brunch menu is your choice of yucca fritters, oysters with Peruvian mignonette sauce, grilled lion’s mane mushrooms, ceviche or a kale salad to start. Course two is either pollo saltado, Chinese-Peruvian fried rice, miso-marinated branzino or Peruvian risotto with a seafood medley. Finish off brunch with lucuma ice cream or panna cotta. Restaurant Week brunch service is available from noon to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
For the $60 dinner, you can choose among seven dishes for the first course, including ceviche, tiradito or a shrimp tempura and tuna roll with yuzu acevichado sauce. Bring in the heat in the second course with either a wok-seared filet mignon, a slow-cooked short rib with leek potato puree or grilled Spanish octopus, or the brunch entrees. The same desserts available for brunch are available for dinner.
An additional cocktail pairing ($30) available for both meals includes a pisco sour; a vodka, pisco and lychee liqueur-based cocktail; and an espresso martini. Do note that portion sizes will be smaller, and the restaurant adds an optional 3% service charge to the bill.
1252 N. Wells St., 872-342-2246, kayaorestaurant.com
— Lauryn Azu
Minyoli
Chef Rich Wang opened this noodle restaurant in the Andersonville neighborhood in May 2024, intending to combine Chinese and Western cooking techniques to create food that calls back to the Taiwanese flavors of his childhood. This is the restaurant’s first year participating in Restaurant Week, and its menus celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year, which starts on Jan. 29.
Minyoli’s $30 brunch menu, which will be offered from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., begins with a breakfast beverage and includes a cucumber salad or sweet potato fries as a starter. Next, select one of their classic Taiwanese breakfast dishes: Taiwanese rice roll (fan tuan) or Taiwanese egg crepe (dan bing). Wrap up the meal with one of their house specials: chilled sesame noodles or Taiwanese chicken and waffles.
For dinner, the restaurant’s $45 menu, which will be offered from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, starts with your choice of cucumber salad or blanched seasonal greens, followed by Taiwanese fried chicken or fried king trumpet mushroom. Next is a choice of rice, either braised beef lu-rou-fan or braised mushroom lu-rou-fan. The star of the show is the noodle dish and there are four options: red braised niuroumian (beef noodle soup); vegan yang chun soup noodle, spicy tallow ganban noodles with sliced beef shank and sesame noodles with cucumber, carrots and fried enoki. End the meal with black sesame tangyuan dumplings.
The dinner menu also includes beverage pairings, which can be purchased for an additional cost, including both alcoholic and alcohol-free drink options.
Do note that these deals are only available for dine-in, and portions will be smaller than the regular menu offerings.
5420 N. Clark St., minyolichicago.com
— K.S.
Sifr
The River North Middle Eastern restaurant from Sujan Sarkar and Sahil Sethi, which opened in 2023, offers a $60 restaurant week dinner menu that’s flexible and varied. Every diner starts with mezze to share: pita, charred green chickpea hummus and pickles. After that, sample two different items from the grill. There are plenty of classic kebabs, but for an extra charge ($8), the scallops with zeitoun and fermented pepper beurre blanc looks like a nice twist.
For large plates, options include branzino, chicken or hearth-roasted cauliflower. But for an extra charge, consider the lamb shank ($16) or duck fesenjan ($12). Finally, for dessert, there’s date pudding or a passion fruit sorbet. But here’s the important part: there are plenty of extra add-ons at a reasonable price: labneh, tzatziki or harissa ($3 each), batata hara ($9) or fattoush ($9) amongst others.
Sifr is only open for dinner and all meats are certified halal.
660 N. Orleans St., 464-204-8711, sifrchicago.com
— Ahmed Ali Akbar
Review: The view is great, but Sifr’s grill deserves attention, too
Tacotlan
When Everardo Macias had to close his first restaurant in the ’90s, he was devastated, but his daughter Jessica Perjes vowed to never allow her father to feel defeated again. Tacotlan, their Mexican restaurant, reclaimed that same space in the Hermosa neighborhood in 2018. They have become best known for their quesabirria, the crispy, cheesy and meaty tacos served with a side of beefy consommé for dipping. But they make so much more, which my dog Kōl and I can attest to from many meals on their seasonal patio.
The $30 lunch menu includes three courses: starter (elote or machos nachos), main (Lalo’s on the Beach burrito bowl; cheese or chicken enmoladas; beef, chicken, shrimp or steak quesabirria dinner) and dessert (flan or chocolate tres leches cake).
The $45 dinner menu gets even beefier and adds a drink: starter (birria or carne asada fries), main (tampiqueña, quesabirria sampler or chile relleno dinners), dessert (flan or chocolate tres leches cake) and agua fresca (cucumber lime, horchata, jamaica, pineapple or strawberry horchata). Also, all of the items will be full-sized (with a medium-sized drink).
So let’s do the numbers! If you ordered the highest priced item for each course, at lunch you would normally spend $41.25, so you save $11.25; at dinner that’s up to $60, so a $15 savings.
4312 W. Fullerton Ave., 773-666-5259, tacotlan.com
— Louisa Kung Liu Chu
Tanoshii
The Tanoshii outpost in West Loop offers a Restaurant Week menu that breaks beyond the typical three-course appetizer/entree/dessert offerings and instead provides six “bites.” It’s something closer to a sushi carousel.
For a $60 dinner, you get a nice range of seafood offerings, at a competitive price, compared with à la carte. You’ll be able to choose between an appetizer of fish and chip — spicy tuna and pico de gallo served on a flour tortilla chip — or breaded scallop to start.
Next, choose between ponzu or bluefin truffle sashimi, then enjoy a flight of three dressed nigiri. Then choose from a variety of special rolls, followed by a negi toro temaki handoll. The meal ends with a mochi ice cream.
Typically, Tanoshii omakase starts at $70 and continues until you say “when,” but this would be a good intro to their food, though the portions on the Restaurant Week menus are smaller. The $30 lunch menu is more of a classic crowd-pleaser: miso soup, a salad of field greens or wakame seaweed, a choice of classic maki and an order of chicken or pork katsu with a side of white rice.
— A.A.A.
720 W. Randolph St., 312-207-8894, tanoshiiwestloop.com
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