Emerald green tiles mark the entrance to Crying Tiger, offering an early hint at the maximalist design inside. Located in Chicago’s River North, the restaurant stands apart from a neighborhood known for its more restrained aesthetic. Surrounded by nearby concepts including Gus’ Sip & Dip, Ramen-San, Three Dots and a Dash, and RPM Italian, Crying Tiger is the latest addition to the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant portfolio.
Named after the Thai beef dish, Crying Tiger is led by chef-partner Thai Dang and developed in partnership with Amarit Dulyapaibul, a managing partner at Lettuce Entertain You. Dulyapaibul’s family ties to the neighborhood run deep. His father owned Star of Siam, one of Chicago’s first casual Thai restaurants, located just a few blocks away.
The restaurant’s north-facing windows, the only ones in the space, are draped to reinforce a sense of escape from Chicago’s North Side. Inside, layered colors and textures define the room, while aromas of garlic, cumin, and basil rise from dishes like lobster pad Thai, barbecue chicken, and crispy confit duck with roasted peanut panang.
“It’s a Southeast Asian concept,” said Dang, who spent the early years of his life in Vietnam. “I grew up eating some dishes that I thought were Vietnamese, but then, through understanding food more and being a chef, I find out that some of these dishes that I was eating were influenced by our neighbors from Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. Vietnam was colonized by the French so there’s touches from them too.”
The restaurant includes a mix of bar booths, bar tables, and a main dining room, with seating for 140 guests and 10 additional seats at the bar. Plans for patio seating are expected to add another 20 seats. Other features include several eye-catching design elements, like a floor-to-ceiling tiger mosaic. Additionally, the red, geometric-patterned gates, inspired by Southeast Asian design, hold particular significance for the team.
“At my grandma's house in Thailand, I remember these big metal gates at the front,” said Dulyapaibul. “It was my job as a kid to lock those gates before we went to bed. Every home on that block had these gates.”
When the team set out to incorporate the gates into the design, they discovered they were originally fabricated in Chicago before becoming widespread across Thailand and Southeast Asia.
“It was a real full circle moment for us,” said Dulyapaibul.
The restaurant opened in October 2025. Among the standout dishes is the prawn toast, which Dang highlights as a defining example of his cooking. “I’m using a Chinese doughnut also known as Chinese crullers or youtiao,” said Dang of the base. “It’s savory and you eat it with rice porridge, soup, or you dip it in condensed milk. What I’ve done is split it in half and piped in a shrimp dumpling kind of filling and then I fried it again. It’s like a spicy fried prawn toast, which is not greasy, but crispy and fragrant. Every table orders it. It’s so unique and fun. That to me is my cooking in a nutshell.”
