Doug Sohn’s homage to encased meat is packed with suits, students and blue-collar lunch-breakers, all of whom wait in longer-than-long lines and put up with limited hours to get classic Chicago dogs and brats served with Doug’s untouchable flair for flavor…

The servers here sport more ink than a Bic factory, and the metal is cranked up so loud you can’t hear yourself talking, but therein lies the charm. Squeeze through the ass-to-elbows crowds and up to the long bar, where you might be in for a lengthy wait. What’s the draw?…

This hip cocktail lounge is exactly what you’d expect from a bar named after a line of T.S. Eliot poetry: pristine (the carefully constructed cocktails are excellent), pretentious (you won’t find a sign on the door—just look for the long lines) and, ultimately, completely and unarguably gorgeous.

Breakfast at Rick Bayless’s most casual spot yet is quiet perfection: a cup of masterfully concocted hot chocolate, a flaky egg empanada, one hell of a sugar-and-cocoa-coated churro…

At Brendan Sodikoff’s doughnut shop adjacent to his Gilt Bar, cooks using the noms de plume François and Henri Gras put out batches of vanilla glazed, chestnut, buttermilk old-fashioned and other doughnuts of both the cake and yeast variety…

What compelled a James Beard Award–winning chef and the owners of the city’s most exclusive cocktail lounge to open a divey bar that slings Tecates and whiskey shots for $3 apiece? A stroke of absolute genius…

You’ll see everything from movie-theater seats to apple-juice crates repurposed to turn this teensy BYOB into a glowing, energetic mind-funk…