Doc B's Restaurant (Gold Coast)

Here's a place that gets the math right: a tavern in a 1907 building that doubles as a three-room inn, so you can drink, eat a serious burger, and stagger upstairs to a king-sized bed without ever calling a car.

Here's a Loop secret worth knowing: while the suits clear out of Clark Street, S2 Express Grill is just getting warmed up.

Boka Group has a knack for making a room feel more expensive than it is, and Zarella Pizzeria & Taverna at 531 N Wells St.

What Mehmet Duzgun is doing at Avaspi in Lakeview is genuinely specific in a way that Mediterranean restaurants in this city rarely are.

Ila's Chicago, tucked into River North at 15 W Hubbard, operates on a premise that most restaurants only gesture toward: the idea that a room should feel like it belongs to someone specific.