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Local experts help us craft the ultimate insider’s guide to Brew City.

This classy breakfast-and-lunch spot near the Art Institute had its origins in Hinsdale, but it may as well have had its beginnings in Paris. The pastry case is full of all manner of European-style cakes, tarts and breakfast pastries…

Individual pies filled with earthy kale and mushrooms. Fried fish alongside crisp nubs of fries, Meyer-lemon tartar sauce to spare…

This scrappy retail operation consists of one woman, one small table of Belgian pastries and breads, and a little coffee kiosk…

Rida Shahin’s soft and chewy salted ciabatta is good enough that you could eat it all by itself and have a perfectly satisfying lunch…

There’s plenty to nosh on at this Pilsen bakery: breakfast burritos, sandwiches and fair-trade coffee. But it’s outstanding tres leches that, um, takes the cake…

Macarons from heaven. Fleur de sel caramels from someplace even better than heaven. Pastry chef Sophie Evanoff cranks out dozens of types of gorgeous French pastries daily…

Owner John Nicolaides named this cute cupcake shop after his favorite grade-school teacher, who baked cupcakes for students’ birthdays. In two of our favorites, bits of bright carrot mesh with cream-cheese buttercream, and tangy dollops of lemon curd cut a rich vanilla cake…

We could take a cue from the cops who stalk this bare-bones doughnut shop and go for a couple of the poofy glazed beauties in the case. Or we could make like the locals and snatch up chocolate-slathered cake doughnuts as if there were a blackout coming…

You may come in determined to buy only one thing—a fluffy loaf of challah, for example. But few can resist the magical aromas of cinnamon and chocolate…