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GuideUpdated July 16, 2026

11 Best Places for Steak Frites in Chicago

Where to find the best steak frites in Chicago — each restaurant rated 4.0★ or higher. Top-rated at 9.4★. Spanning french and italian kitchens. Curated by TastyPals.

The best places for steak frites in Chicago are Mon Ami Gabi, Bistro Campagne, Bistro Monadnock, and more. Start with Mon Ami Gabi if you want the strongest overall first pick.

By James Whitfield•11 ranked picks•Published July 16, 2026•Updated July 16, 2026
Methodology•Editorial team
Mon Ami GabiBistro CampagneBistro Monadnock
11 Best Places for Steak Frites in Chicago
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Top picks at a glance

#1Mon Ami GabiFrench • Chicago • $$$#2Bistro CampagneFrench • Chicago • $$#3Bistro MonadnockFrench • Chicago • $$$$

Who this guide is for

This guide covers the highest-rated spots for steak frites in Chicago. Whether you're a local hunting your next regular or visiting and want to eat well, these picks are sorted by quality and review depth.

Quick picks

Mon Ami Gabi
French • Chicago
Mon Ami Gabi has anchored Lincoln Park since 1998, tucked into the Belden Stratford — a former hotel on the National Register of Historic Places — and that pedigree shows in the wood-trimmed, softl…
Bistro Campagne
French • Chicago
Bistro Campagne has been doing the same thing since 2002 — quietly and without apology — in Lincoln Square, a neighborhood that suits it perfectly: unhurried, residential, not chasing anything.
Bistro Monadnock
French • Chicago
Bistro Monadnock earns its identity from the building it occupies as much as the food it serves.
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Editorial details
Published: July 16, 2026
Last updated: July 16, 2026

On this page

  1. 1. Mon Ami GabiView →
  2. 2. Bistro CampagneView →
  3. 3. Bistro MonadnockView →
  4. 4. Dēliz Italian SteakhouseView →
  5. 5. Little Bad WolfView →
  6. 6. Arbella Cocktail BarView →
  7. 7. Le BouchonView →
  8. 8. GretelView →
  9. 9. ObélixView →
  10. 10. VincentView →
  11. 11. Venteux Brasserie, Cafe & Oyster BarView →

How the restaurants compare

Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Mon Ami Gabi
Google
Mon Ami Gabi
Chicago • French
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$$
Best for
bistro
Mood
Upscale
Bistro Campagne
Chicago • French
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$
Best for
date night
Mood
Easygoing
Bistro Monadnock
Chicago • French
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$$$
Best for
hidden gem
Mood
Special occasion
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Dēliz Italian Steakhouse
Google
Dēliz Italian Steakhouse
Chicago • Italian
9.9/10
TastyPals Score
Price
$$$$
Best for
brunch
Mood
Special occasion

How we chose

We looked for restaurants that feel like a strong fit for the guide topic, not just the most obvious names in the city. The shortlist favors rooms with clear mood, dependable pacing, and enough distinction to help someone decide faster. Read our full methodology →

Room tone

Lighting, pace, and general energy all need to support the reason someone clicked this guide.

Food fit

We favored restaurants that feel best suited for the moment, not just restaurants with broad reputation.

Useful range

The final list tries to give readers enough variation in neighborhood, price, and style to compare real options.

11 ranked picks

Mon Ami Gabi — Mon Ami Gabi has anchored Lincoln Park since 1998, tucked into the Belden Stratford — a former hotel on the National Register of Historic Places — and that pedigree shows in the wood-trimmed, softly lit dining room. This is a French bistro that's earned its longevity. Chef-partner Gabino Sotelino, a James Beard Perrier-Jouet Chef of the Midwest honoree, laid the foundation; Executive Chef David Koehn runs it now. Start with the Onion Soup Au Gratin or the Escargots de Bourgogne, which arrive sizzling in garlic-herb butter. The Steak Frites is the move — prime Midwest beef with hand-cut frites — though the Chicken Grand-Mère, with thick-cut bacon, mushrooms and pommes purée, is the quieter triumph. The wine program is the flex: 80-plus small-production French bottles, some wheeled tableside on a historic rolling cart. It's a $$$ room — entrees run $31.95 to $74.95 — so save it for an anniversary or a parents-in-town dinner where the twelve-top wants something dependable and genuinely Parisian rather than trendy. View restaurant →
Bistro Campagne — Bistro Campagne has been doing the same thing since 2002 — quietly and without apology — in Lincoln Square, a neighborhood that suits it perfectly: unhurried, residential, not chasing anything. Chef Adam Grandt runs a kitchen organized around a simple principle: seasonally rotating bistro classics built on the best ingredients available, with a genuine commitment to organic sourcing from Midwestern farms during the growing season and organic West Coast farms when local supply runs out. That isn't marketing language; it's the architecture of the menu. The room is small and deliberately so — prairie-inflected décor softened by Gallic warmth — and the pace reflects the neighborhood rather than the Loop. This is a place calibrated for two people who want a real dinner, not a scene. For a date, the intimacy the room creates does real work. The menu centers on the kind of French bistro cooking that requires discipline to execute well precisely because it looks simple. Diners consistently gravitate toward the steak tartare and Belgian mussels as openers — the tartare being that reliable test of a kitchen's confidence with raw beef, seasoning, and restraint; the mussels a marker of how seriously the kitchen treats sourcing. The Lyonnaise salad — frisée, lardons, poached egg — is the dish that regulars seem to return to, a classic that rewards a kitchen willing to get every component right rather than improvise. Steak frites anchor the mains as a year-round fixture, which tells you something about the kitchen's conviction: you don't keep a dish on the menu permanently unless you trust it completely. The price point is accessible for this level of sourcing and intention. The move here is to book ahead for a weekend evening — the room is small enough that walk-ins are a gamble — and to resist the instinct to skip the classics in favor of something that sounds more interesting. The Lyonnaise salad and steak frites are not defaults; they are the point. If the cassoulet or beef bourguignon appear on a seasonal menu, diner accounts suggest they're worth the detour. Reserve a table, order the tartare, and let the room do what it was built to do. View restaurant →
Bistro Monadnock — Bistro Monadnock earns its identity from the building it occupies as much as the food it serves. The 1891 Monadnock Building in Chicago's South Loop is one of the city's great architectural landmarks, and the restaurant on its ground floor — launched by the UNA Hospitality partners behind the cocktail bars Victor and Love Street — treats that heritage seriously. This is their first restaurant, which matters: the care of first-timers who know exactly what kind of room they want to open. Chef Johnny Besch, a Chicago native who spent years as Executive Chef at the West Loop steakhouse BLVD, brings a classicist's respect for French bistro tradition without the stuffiness that usually accompanies it. The pitch here is specific: all the canonical gestures of a French bistro, executed with enough creative investment that it doesn't read as nostalgia. That's a harder line to walk than it sounds, and by most accounts, Monadnock walks it. The menu is anchored by the kind of dishes that reveal a kitchen's seriousness. The bouillabaisse — built on a rich lobster head broth — is the headline, the sort of preparation that demands real technique and patience, and diners consistently single it out. The Parisian gnocchi has drawn comparable praise, lighter and more refined than its Italian cousin. Spring rabbit with boudin blanc, shiitake mushroom, and baby vegetables reads as the dish most likely to surprise: elegant plating, classical French sausage tradition, executed with seasonal restraint. Steak frites and skate wing round out the repertoire for those who want their bistro fundamentals unambiguous. The frites, multiple sources note, are not an afterthought. The room, inside a Banchet Award-nominated design that honors the Monadnock's architecture, skews well for a date — the bones of the space do atmospheric work that a newer build would have to fake. Book ahead for weekend evenings; this is a South Loop address that draws beyond its immediate neighborhood. If you're ordering one dish to understand what Besch is after, make it the bouillabaisse — it's the clearest statement of intent on the menu. View restaurant →

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Dēliz Italian Steakhouse — Dēliz Italian Steakhouse arrived in Bucktown in December 2025 with a premise that's harder to pull off than it sounds: marry the muscle of a serious American steakhouse with the soul of Italian cooking, in the former Etta space on West North Avenue. Restaurateur Steve Gogolab and chef-partner Jake Peterson aren't just draping pasta next to a ribeye and calling it fusion — the concept is anchored by a genuinely rare beef program. Dēliz is one of only 16 restaurants in the country with access to chocolate-fed Australian wagyu from Mayura Station, a ranch that has been operating since 1847. That single fact tells you exactly who this place is for: people who care about provenance, who want the Italian-American table elevated rather than merely decorated, and who are willing to spend accordingly for the distinction. The kitchen's priorities are legible from the menu. The meatballs — made from a blend of wagyu and veal — signal that the beef program isn't reserved for special-occasion cuts alone; it runs through the entire cooking philosophy. The steak frites is the through-line dish, the one that tests whether the Italian-steakhouse promise holds up on a Tuesday. The roasted seafood tower (crab, lobster, scallops, prawns, oysters, clams) reads as a serious tableside event, the kind of order that defines a group dinner. And the tiramisu, which sources have singled out as a 'smokeshow,' has already developed a reputation that suggests Peterson treats dessert as a closing argument, not an afterthought. The room — a shadowy main dining room plus an energetic second-floor lounge — has the bones of a place that wants to be both a date-night anchor and a lively late-night option in a neighborhood with options to spare. The practical move: if the wagyu program is the draw, don't skip the meatballs as your entry point — they're where the kitchen's sourcing philosophy is most accessible before you commit to the larger cuts. The pan brioche is the right opener to keep the table occupied. The second-floor lounge area is reportedly livelier, but if you're there to eat seriously, the main dining room is the call. Book ahead — Dēliz opened to real buzz in late 2025 and has earned attention from Chicago Mag and The Infatuation within weeks of opening, which means weekend tables won't sit idle for long. View restaurant →
Little Bad Wolf — Andersonville's Clark Street corridor has developed into one of Chicago's most reliably interesting dining stretches, and Little Bad Wolf — open since 2014 — has a lot to do with that reputation. The room is compact and illustrated with wolf-from-Little-Red-Riding-Hood imagery, the soundtrack reportedly lands somewhere usefully chill, and the kitchen's entire premise is American bar food approached with genuine intentionality. No reservations, which signals exactly the kind of crowd-driven, walk-in culture the place has cultivated over a decade of consistent business. The Wolf Burger is the anchor and the dish most discussed in outside coverage — Time Out has cited it among Chicago's best, and the build makes the case on paper: three beef patties, bacon, American cheese, onion straws, house pickles, red onion, mayo, and a fried egg. That's a lot of components, and the burger's reputation rests on the idea that the kitchen keeps them in proportion rather than letting the stack collapse into chaos. The Mac and Cheese has its own following, known for a creamy, heavy preparation finished with honey-cured bacon, scallions, and toasted breadcrumbs — the kind of dish that diners consistently point to as a reason to return. The Steak Frites and Half Fried Chicken round out a menu that rewards people who want comfort food with some thought behind it, at a price point — squarely mid-range — that keeps ordering freely realistic. Over 100 beers and a proper cocktail list make Little Bad Wolf a natural landing spot for groups, and the no-reservations policy means weekend waits are a genuine possibility. Go early, plan for the line, and when you sit down, the Wolf Burger and Mac and Cheese are where most people start — and for good reason. View restaurant →
Arbella Cocktail Bar — Let me tell you what Arbella actually is, because the word "cocktail bar" undersells it in one direction and oversells it in another. This is a room that figured out the thing most cocktail bars get wrong: the food isn't an afterthought bribed into existence by liquor license requirements. It's a genuine kitchen running alongside a genuine bar program, which means you can show up here at 10 p.m. genuinely hungry and leave genuinely satisfied — not just less drunk. The crowd knows it. You'll see people who came for drinks end up splitting a full spread, and people who came for food end up staying for two more rounds. That feedback loop is harder to engineer than it looks, and Arbella has it. The menu plays a smart range of registers. The Coconut Shrimps are the kind of thing that sounds like filler but arrives with enough crunch and sweetness-to-heat contrast to make you order a second round before the first is gone. The Thai Fried Chicken Sliders bring real technique — that brine-forward, lacquered-crust fry that holds up under sauce without going soft. The Smash Burger is exactly what it should be: aggressively seared, lacy-edged, no architectural pretension. And then there's the Cafecito Tiramisu, which is the move you didn't know you needed — espresso bitterness dialed up, mascarpone still doing its cool, cloud-like thing, with enough of a Latin coffee riff to make it feel like it belongs here specifically. Practical intel: the Spinach Cauliflower Fondue and Steak Frites are strong anchors if you're building a table spread rather than snacking solo. The KFC Chx Basket is bar food done right — order it early, it goes fast. Price-point is genuinely reasonable for what lands on the table. Go on a weeknight if you want breathing room; weekends fill up. Sit at or near the bar if you can — that's where the room makes the most sense. Start with the Thai Fried Chicken Sliders and end with the Cafecito Tiramisu; that's the through-line. View restaurant →
Gretel — Gretel opened in Logan Square in September 2020 with no reservations policy, no soft launch fanfare, and what appears to be a very clear idea of what it wants to be: a serious drinking bar — black-painted walls, a rolling ladder on the liquor wall — that also runs a kitchen people talk about. The team behind Little Bad Wolf in Andersonville built it walk-ins only, which is either a philosophical stance or a practical one, probably both. What's notable is that the bar side and the kitchen side don't seem to be in competition with each other. That combination is rarer than it sounds at this price level. The menu is the kind of thing that reads like someone wrote down everything they actually wanted to eat — Prime Rib, a Bone-In Ribeye Dinner for Two, Oysters Rockefeller, and then Pork Belly Nachos with Carolina BBQ sauce, cheese sauce, and guacamole on the same page. The Gretel Griddle Burger (two patties, white and yellow American, garlic aioli, pickles, $20.95) is consistently the dish diners point to first, and it's reportedly the reason a lot of people come back. The Prime Rib French Dip — baguette, horseradish aioli, au jus at $24.95 — is the kind of late-night bar food that has no business being this considered. The Pork Belly Nachos are known for using actual pork belly rather than the pulled or shredded shortcut most places take. The Prime Rib and the Bone-In Ribeye Dinner for Two anchor the menu for anyone trying to eat well without spending what a downtown room would charge. Practically speaking: walk-ins only means a weekday arrival early in the evening is your best play if you want to skip a wait. The bar is the right seat. Start with the Griddle Burger before you make any other decisions. View restaurant →
Vincent — Andersonville runs on a particular frequency — unhurried, genuinely welcoming, built for the long evening rather than the quick turn — and Vincent seems to have tuned itself to that same signal. It's a French-leaning contemporary room operating at price level two, which in Chicago means you can actually open with escargots and a glass of something cold without running the mental math on whether the main course will ruin you. That calculus-free ease is rarer and harder to engineer than a tasting menu, and by most accounts Vincent pulls it off without making a production of it. The menu keeps a classical French backbone without treating it as a straitjacket. The escargots are consistently cited as a benchmark preparation — the kind of garlicky, herb-driven butter that makes the dish feel essential rather than performative. The tuna tartare has a reputation for freshness and clean plating, avoiding the cold, over-composed style that plagues too many raw preparations around the city. Among mains, the steak frites anchors the menu with the confidence of something that knows exactly what it is: properly approached, reportedly well-seasoned, with frites that diners describe as staying crisp. The half chicken is the dish that comes up most often as the overlooked call — known for juicy results and skin that actually does what chicken skin is supposed to do. Close with the Basque cheesecake; it's the dessert that gets named first by people who've been more than once, burnished and custardy in the way the style promises and frequently underdelivers in this city. Weeknights fill more slowly, so an earlier seating gives you room to linger without pressure. The room is intimate enough that a weekend wait registers as genuinely long — book ahead. Come with someone you actually want to talk to. View restaurant →

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