The Best Restaurant Openings in Chicago - September 2026

Soul & Smoke’s Avondale and West Loop locations are counter-service spots, but married co-founders chef D’Andre Carter and sommelier Heather Bublick have gone bigger with their Evanston flagship. Opened September 1 in the century-old barn that has long housed the company’s catering operation, the full-service restaurant serves the brand’s brisket, pulled pork, turkey tips, and gooey mac and cheese throughout the day. At dinner, Carter draws more deeply on his fine-dining background at Moto, where he and Bublick met. The expanded menu includes bang bang barbecue shrimp, halibut collar in vadouvan gold curry, smoked chicken gumbo, and a playful “cigar” of smoked oxtail and collard greens honoring the late Homaro Cantu.

Bublick’s beverage program highlights wineries owned by women and people of color, while the dining room features work by local artists including Hebru Brantley and JC Rivera. Add an open kitchen, a smoker room, and deep ties to Evanston’s Fifth Ward, and the ambitious flagship still feels like a neighborhood gathering place.

One late-August return worth catching up on is Café Kumiko, the daytime concept Julia Momosé first ran from a walk-up window during the pandemic. Now settled inside Kumiko as a proper sit-down experience, the café serves Japanese breakfast and kissaten-inspired fare from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Kumiko, where Momosé leads both the kitchen and beverage programs, was recently ranked No. 70 on the 51–100 list for The 50 Best Bars 2026. The menu includes chilled chawanmushi with sweet corn and crab, twice-fried yuzu koshō karaage, and a shokupan-muffin breakfast sandwich layered with hash brown, baked egg, duck confit, and herb aioli. The truffle milk toast, topped with fermented honey ice cream and shaved Périgord truffle, returns as well. The drinks are equally considered, with Japanese tea, matcha, sake, cocktails, and Momosé’s spiritfree creations.

Chef Jimmy Papadopoulos first drafted a business plan for Black Briar in 2009. Seventeen years later, he has finally opened the Fulton Market restaurant with Tim Anderson, his former colleague at Bellemore. After Bellemore closed in 2021, Papadopoulos stepped away from restaurant kitchens to work as a private chef. He and Anderson began developing Black Briar in late 2024, working with Studio K Creative founder Karen Herold to give the modern American tavern a lived-in quality. A 20-seat, U-shaped bar anchors a room layered with aged wood, leather, vintage rock photography, preserved vegetables, and whimsical taxidermy.

Papadopoulos’s menu is just as detailed without becoming precious. Oysters come with horseradish ice and roasted kombu, while fluffy Hawaiian rolls are paired with country ham and coal-roasted pineapple butter. There are also deviled eggs with prosciutto chile crisp, garlicky sourdough snail toast, venison tartare with crisp sweet potato chips, and pork short rib with knockwurst and coal-roasted sweet potato. Anderson’s beverage program leans toward American wines and spirits, including bourbon from a house-selected Koval barrel, while some Old World bottles round out the list. For all the meticulous detail, Black Briar still feels like the neighborhood tavern Papadopoulos has been imagining since 2009.

Is Logan Inn an all-day café, a cocktail bar, or an actual inn? Yes, yes, and yes. Two years in the works, the Logan Square hybrid from Lettuce Entertain You veteran Kiva Wenig begins the day with Graffeo coffee, black tahini lattes, cold-pressed juice, and pastries from Good Ambler pastry chef Meg Galus. Lunch brings seasonal panzanella and focaccia sandwiches filled with prosciutto and pecorino crema or pimento chicken.

By late afternoon, the café gives way to a cocktail lounge where martinis, including spirit-free versions, share the menu with $14 classics and $15 originals such as the rum-based Do Not Disturb and the savory tequila-and-mezcal El Tigre. Half sandwiches and bar snacks, including Calabrian pimento dip with pretzels and stracciatella with pistachio pesto, keep things going into the evening. And yes, the inn is real: 28 guest rooms sit upstairs.

After finding success in West Town and along the Chicago River, Bonhomme Group’s Beatnik has landed in Lincoln Park with Daniel Alonso’s maximalist mix of colorful rugs, patterned tiles, ornate chandeliers, collected furniture, and abundant greenery. Chef Marcos Campos draws from the cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa with smoked-eggplant baba ganoush, halloumi with tomato and quince jam, curry meatballs, spinach-and-feta borek, lamb-and-beef kefta, and chicken tagine with roasted olives and saffron couscous.

Adjacent to Beatnik Lincoln Park, Bonhomme Group’s Lolo y Lola is a 22-seat, walk-in-only pintxos and wine bar named for owner Daniel Alonso’s Galician grandparents. Sherry, vermouth, Estrella Galicia, and Spanish and Portuguese wines accompany pan con tomate, chicken croquettes, patatas bravas marineras with garlic shrimp, a runny tortilla de patata with cider-braised txistorra, and a bocadillo filled with Galician octopus. Chalkboard menus and a bar holding nearly half the room complete the easygoing Spanish taberna feel.

Chicago is hardly short on Thai restaurants, but Taan arrives with a clear reason to exist. Owner-chef Chanita Chayaluk, a second-generation Thai Chicagoan, left a career in school counseling to earn a Thai cuisine diploma at Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok. She continues to return to Thailand to deepen her knowledge. At Taan, Chayaluk pairs Thai recipes with local produce on a seasonal, shareable menu that reaches beyond the dishes most familiar to Chicago diners. There is no pad Thai. Recent offerings have included grilled eggplant salad, dry red curry with pork belly, makwaen fish sauce caramel wings, flank steak with jaew, clay-pot glass noodles, and whole fried fish dressed with fish sauce caramel and herbs.

Taan is as much a wine bar as it is a restaurant. Bar director Craig Langworthy’s concise, rotating list is built to complement the food’s sweetness, acidity, and heat, with wines from Michigan, California, France, and Spain, plus selections from Logan Square’s Middle Brow.