Things I Like - Food

Last week's post about the upcoming Chicago restaurant week events got me to thinking about Chicago as a restaurant city in general. We really do have the best of both worlds here - the great casual, neighborhood place and the special occasion, high end restaurant, not to mention quite a few options in between.

And there's always something new happening - 2008 saw a number of new places open up within a 10 minute walk of the White house: Piccolo Sogno, Hub 51, La Madia, Graham Elliot and Sixteen. That would be:

2 casual places
- Hub 51, New American
- La Madia, a trendy pizzeria

1 high end restaurant
- Sixteen, the beautiful new spot in the Trump hotel (OK, probably an 18 minute walk)

2 tweeners
- Piccolo Sogno, the old Thyme space re-born as an Italian
- Graham Elliot, a new edgy bistro in the old Chef Allen space

So 5 new places, all different and all getting pretty decent reviews. While we do live in a great restaurant neighborhood (River North), this is pretty amazing given the number of other favorites already in the area...La Scarola, Crofton on Wells, Brasserie Jo, Cyrano's, Prosecco and Aigre Deux, just to name a few. The problem isn't difficulty in finding a great place for dinner, it's making a choice from all the great options.

The sites below offer some help with that process - the first one (Open Table) is a free reservation service for many Chicago restaurants. The other 3 are 'review' sites (both reader and professional) that can be searched by neighborhood, cuisine and price point.

I'm looking forward to dining out in 2009 - even if there wasn't a single new restaurant opening in Chicago, we would still have plenty to choose from.

http://www.opentable.com/start.aspx?m=3
http://www.yelp.com/c/chicago/restaurants
http://chicago.metromix.com/restaurants
http://www.gayot.com/restaurants/bestof/bestof/chicago.html