How Many Michelin Star Restaurants Are There In Chicago?

Chicago is the Midwest's big cosmopolitan city. It has art, culture, 2.7 million residents, a river that turns green once a year, one beloved MLB team and one tolerated MLB team, a lot of wind, and more than 7,300 restaurants. Of those 7,300 eateries, 26 Chicago restaurants have been awarded at least one Michelin star.

New York City has 67 Michelin-starred restaurants. Washington, D.C. has 23 and Los Angeles has 24, but none of them three-star restaurants. Chicago's 26 starred restaurants include 16 one-star restaurants, four two-star restaurants, and one three-star restaurant: Alinea. It's one of only 13 restaurants in the U.S. to currently hold three stars. Impressively, since it was awarded its stars in the 2011 Michelin Guide, it has held them for 12 consecutive years, even through a complete overhaul in 2016.

A three-star rating from Michelin means it's worth a special trip and has exceptional cuisine. Dining at Alinea is described by Michelin as "part theater and pure pleasure; and meals are an olfactory experience by dint of scented vapors, tricks, and tableside fun." Tasting menus (sometimes printed as word searches) have been known to feature invisible pumpkin pie, sheets of dehydrated langoustine that dissolves into bowls of bouillabaisse, Russian cabbage soup served in Russian dolls, and a dessert course known as "paint," a plated dessert constructed tableside for the diners.

In the Michelin rating system, winning two stars means a restaurant is worth a detour and has excellent cooking. Chicago is currently home to four restaurants with four Michelin stars: Oriole, Ever, Smyth, and Moody Tongue.

Oriole is a contemporary American restaurant located in the West Loop. Michelin calls out its deeply committed and passionate team, as well as its beautifully renovated industrial-elegant space. Its extended tasting menu has included sablefish glazed with shio koji butterscotch, golden Kaluga caviar, creamed watercress and amazake; bergamot sorbet with a nettle balinese meringue, longan, and sorrel-nettle granita; and a squid ink pie tee shell filled with koshihikari rice, Norwegian king crab, Maine sea urchin, and shaved Perigord truffles.

Ever (which fans might recognize from "The Bear," Season 2) is praised for its meals being "first and foremost a visual thrill: Inventive presentations that entice at every turn," and then for its common thread of "sweet and herbaceous notes" through each dish. Michelin calls out Ever's green apple and nasturtium with frozen celery root cream and bay scallops under a sugar shell; other dishes include a frozen jasmine dome with chocolate, strawberry, and marigold and green asparagus with black garlic, salmon mousse, and oxalis.

Smyth is a New American tribute to Smyth County, Virginia. Its focus is heavily influenced by farmlands and the ocean (which is interesting, because Smyth County is fully landlocked in the Appalachian Mountains in western Virginia). Michelin discusses its creativity with simple, seasonal produce rather than luxury ingredients: wild Maine mussels in a savory licorice cream, chilled avocado with Bangkok guava paste and hoja santa, uni glazed in egg yolk, venison with truffle liver ragout and sauce civet, and saffron ice cream topped with beeswax-thickened honey over roasted quince. Summer menus in 2023 included an open-face macaron with nasturtium flower custard and raspberry and Dungeness crab in fresh-pressed walnut oil, almond milk, black walnut, and velvet horn.

Moody Tongue is a particularly odd and exciting addition to the starred restaurants of Chicago — it's a brewery as much as it is a restaurant. An upscale brewpub, to be sure, but a brewpub. Michelin praises its hyper-seasonal and creative menu that is "brilliantly matched with a virtuosic array of house-crafted brews." The dishes featured in the Guide are poached Maine lobster in spiced tomato water, seared Hudson Valley foie gras with burnt peach dashi, and dark chocolate cake with toasted rye ice cream. 

Beers featured on Moody Tongue's website include a shaved black truffle pilsner, toasted rice Japanese-style lager, juiced lychee IPA, bourbon barrel-aged 12-layer cake imperial stout, a scotch barrel-aged peated scotch ale, and more.

One star means a restaurant has high-quality cooking and is worth a stop — and Chicago has 16 of these. Topolobampo is a Rick Bayless restaurant featuring upscale Mexican cuisine, such as scallop laminado: rosemary-smoked Hudson Canyon sea scallops, nectarine-habanero salsa, avocado mousse, jicama, tangerine lace & mint marigold microgreens. Sepia is an Andrew Zimmerman American contemporary restaurant in a 19th-century print shop that made Michelin describe chicken as "downright exciting." Next is another restaurant from the Alinea group; it purports to "explore the world of cuisine" by changing its menu and dining experience to a new region, theme, or "moment in time" multiple times a year.

Mako, with 22 seats, and Omakase Yume, with two nightly seatings at an eight-seat bar, are sushi restaurants. Kasama is a contemporary Filipino restaurant, run by a married pair, as is Elske, an American contemporary restaurant named for the Danish word for "love." Porto, named for the Portuguese port city, is a Portuguese seafood restaurant. Galit is a Middle Eastern restaurant serving a prix fixe menu of familiar dishes. North Pond showcases American cuisine in a rustic dining room that started out as an ice skating warming shelter. Goosefoot is French contemporary, and Boka is American with global accents.

If you think Michelin eating is all foam and plating, you'll find that in Chicago, too. Michelin describes Schwa, Temporis, Esmé, and EL Ideas as innovative, creative, and modern, rather than associating them with regional cuisines.