Entrées | 100 best things we ate and drank in 2012

Fish taco at Antique Taco
First and foremost, a fried fish taco has to be crispy. This one is. The fact that it’s also smoky (thanks to the smoked cabbage slaw) and hot (sriracha tartar sauce) is just a bonus.

Rhubarb pizza at Balena
In the beginning of spring, chef Chris Pandel did an event with a farm—a farm that had only rhubarb available. He’d never heard of rhubarb pizza (who has?), but he tried it anyway, pairing thin rhubarb slices with shaved pancetta, whipped ricotta and mint. What he ended up creating is one of the most craveable—and, wouldn’t you know it, most fleeting—pizzas in town.

Jidori chicken Singapore noodles at Bento Box
If Chinese takeout died and went to heaven, it’d become chef Rick Spiros’s toothsome noodles, strewn with Thai basil and topped with chili-rubbed chicken.

Boarding House Lunch at Big Jones
Lunch? No, this thing is an extravaganza: potatoes, biscuits, greens, corn bread, red beans and rice, and a pile of lard-and-butter-fried chicken. No point in arguing which is better—the chicken or the sides?—because it’s all coming to your table, and you’re going to eat it all anyway.

Burger at Bread & Wine
The phenomenon of this restaurant’s heavily female clientele has been well documented. Less well documented is what these wine-guzzling ladies are eating: the fat beef burger, topped with onion jam and chorizo and shoved between two halves of a juice-soaking pretzel bun.

40-day rib eye at David Burke’s Primehouse
A steak is a steak is a steak. Until you have one of these splurge-worthy dry-aged steaks, whose deep flavor, gorgeous marbling and sumptuous texture are enough to silence your wallet’s cries for help.

Beef tongue sandwich at Eggy’s
If everybody in Chicago who thought they didn’t like tongue could eat this sandwich, where the tender beef mingles with sliced jalapeños and a fried onion ring, they’d realize they love tongue after all. But barely anybody did this, which is why this sandwich isn’t on the menu anymore.

Curry falafel at Falafill
Falafel made with chickpeas is so…old-fashioned. These smooth-on-the-inside, super-crunchy-on-the-outside balls of curried pureed yellow lentils are the future.

Loch Duart salmon salad at Ikram
What kind of high-end fashion boutique also has a café serving beautiful farm-to-table food, like this perfectly cooked filet of salmon set atop a colorful array of constantly changing (but always spectacularly fresh) vegetables? Only you, Ikram.

Steak sopes at La Ciudad
Sure, the steak is tender and everything. But what makes this sope remarkable is the supreme, crisp-but-tender masa, which these guys make in-house.

Heng Shan–style preserved rice noodle at Lao Hunan
If you can get over the fact that this restaurant’s unofficial mascot is Chairman Mao, you’ll be rewarded with these slick noodles, which are tangled with thinly sliced beef and hot peppers and covered in cilantro and peanuts.

Nayarit-style prawns at Mariscos El Veneno
You’ll never pry a recipe out of this casual coastal Mexican joint, but by the time you’ve worked your way through a messy platter of these peel-and-eat prawns (slicked with heavily spiced, rust-red chili sauce and sauteed shell-on), you won’t care how to make them, only how to get more.

Sandwich at Naf Naf Grill
It doesn’t matter whether it’s falafel or chicken schnitzel: As long as you can put it in one of this mini chain’s warm, rolled-and-baked-on-site pitas and stuff it with an array of condiments, this sandwich will kill. (The good kind of kill.)

Pork shoulder at Next: Sicily
The star of Next’s Italian menu was this incomparable piece of pork, which had been braised for a decade and fell apart into fatty chunks whenever anybody looked at it the right way.

The City Bird at Pecking Order
It was a toss-up between the City Bird sandwich (grilled chicken, pickles, pâté, fried egg) and the Country Bird (fried chicken, Gouda, pimento mayo), both of which layer punchy flavors on top of each other until the sandwiches practically explode. But, ultimately, we chose the City Bird, because this is Chicago—and city beats country every time.

Trapanese at Piccolo Sogno Due
Todd Stein’s conglomerate of shellfish has everything: sweet mussels and shrimp, a spicy tomato broth and a punchy almond pesto.

Crispy whole fish at the Savoy
You’ll have to stare down a whole lubina fish (think sea bass, but Spanish), but thankfully it’s been deboned to make getting at the crispy-skinned bites easier. Chef Brian Greene takes license to change up the type of fish, but so long as his smoky tomato-chili romesco sauce remains on the plate, we’re game.