The most expensive restaurants in Chicago are also architecturally luxurious. The Windy City has these expanses of deco architecture for some of the greatest chefs in the world to advance their modernist food art at these incredible restaurants. You can even partake of it (for a price!).
Continue reading to learn about the 8 most expensive restaurants in Chicago, including their head chefs, histories, and amazing dishes.
- Oriole
- LH Rooftop
- Maple & Ash
- Mastro’s Restaurant
- Next
- Smyth
- Brindille
- Alinea
Address: 661 W Walnut St, Chicago
Executive Chef: Noah Sandoval
photo source: Flickr
Oriole is one of those hidden city treasures in Chicago’s West Loop. It’s down a slinky alley where you might not expect to find a restaurant with these price tags. But Noah Sandoval, both owner and head chef, puts out these two Michelin-star dishes and can fit up to 28 diners at a time. Despite the restaurant’s credentials, it takes pride in providing an accessible, intimate dining experience, which includes a beautiful dining room and open kitchen.
The restaurant’s nightly meal is $215 per diner with a potential for a $125-$250 wine pairing added in. Oriole also has a proud AAA 5 Diamond rating, which few restaurants can claim.
Did you know?
The restaurant specializes in a variety of cuisine. Its fanciest dishes include a Maine sea urchin nigiri, Spanish mackerel with Asian pear and sea grape, Alaskan king crab with chicharrones and aguachile, Berkshire pork ribs, and Japanese A5 wagyu beef garnished with golden cordyceps, lemon thyme, and a matsutake reduction.
Address: 85 E Wacker Dr 22nd Floor
Executive Chef: Jacob Verstegen
photo source: LondonHouse Chicago
LH Rooftop is part of the LondonHouse development, a luxury lifestyle hotel plan created by the Oxford Capital Group in 2013. Eating at the LH Rooftop puts you above the city lights where you can dine in luxury. fas
Not all the dishes at LH Rooftop are astronomically expensive, but their luxury meals can cost you $220 per person, easily, when you partake of the best the place has to offer. This includes such radical takes on American cuisine as a country-fried A5 wagyu steak with shoyu demiglaze, shrimp de jonghe, and even an espresso martini.
Did you know?
One of the biggest attractions at the LH Rooftop is the building, a classic 1923 construction by the architect Alfred S. Alschuler, known as one of the “Big Four” of Chicago’s historic skyscrapers.
Address: 8 W Maple St
Executive Chef: Danny Grant
photo source: Maple and Ash
Maple & Ash is an upscale seafood and steak place that prides itself on reducing pretension with its presentation. Its “I Don’t Give a F*@k” tasting menu is $200 per person. But the real treat is the Baller Fire-Roasted Seafood Tower, which includes Alaskan King Crab, blue prawns, Maine lobster, and more, roasted in the restaurant’s hearth and finished with chili oil and garlic butter. That’s $239 per go.
Head chef Danny Grant has two Michelin stars that he brings to this steakhouse concept along with a wine list notorious as one of the best in the world.
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Some of the restaurant’s most prestigious meals include steaks like a 40oz 45-Day Dry-Aged Tomahawk ($220) and 5oz Olive-Fed Wagyu beef from Japan ($185).
Address: 520 N Dearborn St
Executive Chef: Mike Clark
photo source: Mastros Restaurant
Mastro’s Restaurant has locations in Illinois and Arizona, including this one in Chicago. Their main feature is 28-day wet-aged steak, USDA Prime, paired with signature seafood towers of crab legs, oysters, shrimp, and more.
Unlike other restaurants on this list, Mastro’s aims for a more laid-back atmosphere, featuring hand-made cocktails and live entertainment at the bar in the dining room. The menu’s crown jewel is a 40oz Wagyu Tomahawk chop from Broadleaf Farms for $250.
Did you know?
Some of Mike Clark’s most prestigious meals include Bigeye Tuna steak, a 10oz Japanese A5 Wagyu steak, and signature lobster mashed potatoes.
Address: 953 W Fulton Market
Executive Chef: Grant Achatz
photo source: Next Restaurant
Next on W Fulton Market is all about changing up its luxury prix fixe menu (meaning “fixed price”) three times a year. The chefs Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas have taken the restaurant to incredible prestige, including 21 4-star reviews in the Chicago Tribune, a Michelin star, and a James Beard Award.
The meals are incredibly varied, and at different times could include anything from razor clams in spicy leche de tigre, raw marinated scallops, corned beef tongues garnished with edible flowers, foie-gras, uni garnished with seaweed, mushroom chawanmushi, and so much more.
Did you know?
Grant Achatz is a still-young chef who has won numerous “Rising Star Chef” awards. He is famous for his pioneering use of molecular gastronomy, which uses chemistry to change how food is prepared and presented. Another restaurant showcasing his work will show up even later on this list.
Address: 177 N Ada St #101
Executive Chef: John B. Shields
photo source: Smyth and the Loyalist
John B. Shields serves as executive chef at Smyth alongside his wife, Karen Urie Shields, who is the executive pastry chef. Smyth specializes in cuisine derived from the ocean in a harmonious variety of courses that combine old and new styles of food preparation. Specialties include a brioche doughnut with aged beef, garnished with summer cherry tomatoes rushed in black garlic and warmed lobster with horseradish and roasted strawberry jus.
Their menu costs $265 per person at the restaurant’s amazing location, which includes a spacious dining room, lounge, and open kitchen.
Did you know?
Smyth has been awarded two Michelin stars, so you can be sure that you’re in good hands when you get ready for your meal. Knowing this, as well as knowing that the husband-and-wife owner team includes a world-class pastry chef, you would be justified in looking forward to dessert as much as dinner. One of the restaurant’s signature specialties is a panna cotta of silken sunflower, garnished with almond granita, peach pit, and candied pine cone.
Address: 534 N Clark St, Chicago
Executive Chef: Carrie Nahabedian
photo source: Brindille
Chef Carrie Nahabedian designs the Brindille menu with the intent of translating the spirit of Autumntime to food. Though the menu constantly changes, its major features include its fresh takes on French-style cuisine, which you can enjoy beneath hand-carved wooden fixtures as you peruse a wine list over 200-bottles strong.
Between cocktails that include strawberry caviar and vodka and their famous entrees, like a $94 one-pound boneless prime ribeye, the restaurant is one of the most expensive in Chicago. Other dishes include a rack of rabbit garnished with veal sweetbreads, lobster cooked in butter flavored with vanilla and coral, and frog’s legs with a blanc-manger of cauliflower and parsley. The showstopper though is authentic Beluga Hybrid Reserve caviar from Italy, $295 a serving.
Did you know?
Nahabedian used to be the head chef at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles before opening NAHA in Chicago, which won a total of seven consecutive Michelin stars before she left to open Brindille in 2013. “Brindille” translates to “twig.”
Address: 1723 N Halsted St
Executive Chef: Grant Achatz
photo source: Alinea Restaurant
The most expensive restaurant in Chicago is Alinea. This restaurant has a tasting menu of 6 courses that costs $355 per person, not including drink pairings. After being named the world’s best restaurant by Elite Traveler and the best in North America by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, Alinea earned its 3-Star rating in the Michelin guide, making it one of only 14 restaurants in the United States with the honor.
Chef Grant Achatz excels at bringing modernist cuisine to Alinea, including such treasures as langoustine yuba, clear pumpkin pie, and their iconic edible balloon (yes, it really floats).
Did you know?
One of Alinea’s unique services, which has become popular during the pandemic, is a prepaid delivery service for the Alinea Pot Pie Trio Box. This service ships three pot pies to your house in an engraved pie server for a $165 price, plus a $25 delivery fee. These pies are one Pilcrow Poultry with white wine sauce, one Short Rib with Red Wine Bordelaise, and one Wild Mushroom with Black Truffle Bechamel.
The Takeaway
From two hundred-dollar steaks to the most incredible seafood to the latest creations in molecular gastronomy, the food on display from these restaurants is as incredible as the prices. If you want to partake of Chicago’s history and its prestigious cuisine, you’ll have to come prepared to spend hundreds per person at one of these amazing eateries. And remember, that’s not including drink pairings, sales tax, or gratuity, which all add up quickly when you’re eating some of the best food in the world.
