The motto of Chicago ought to be, “Too much to do, not enough time.”
That’s how I feel whenever I visit. Whether restaurants, architecture, museums or music, Chicago overflows with wonderful options, and that certainly extends to great places to drink wine.
On a recent trip that unfortunately coincided with a biting Arctic blast, I sought out warm refuges with superb food and intriguing wine lists.
I was looking for casual, comfortable places that served full meals and offered lists with a clear personality. I omitted the sorts of classic, expensive Michelin-starred restaurants where you would expect to find extensive wine lists. These eight places stood out as distinctive emblems of Chicago’s singular Midwestern character.
I could have included many more, like Beautiful Rind, a lovely cheese and wine shop where you can pay a small corkage fee to open bottles with cheese and salumi; Easy Does It, an excellent natural wine bar with a modest menu; Bronzeville Winery, a thoughtful wine bar that celebrates its South Side neighborhood; Daisies, a fascinating restaurant with a small selection of Midwestern wines embedded in its list; and other places I loved, like Lula Cafe and Avec. Not enough time.
Here they are, in no particular order.
Dear Margaret
This French Canadian restaurant in Lakeview looks exactly as I picture a French Canadian place: cozy and warm, knotty wood floors, a bit spare. There’s no place I would rather be on a freezing winter day, though I think I might feel that way any time of year.
The food is soulful, the wine list chosen with care and the hospitality gracious. My cold-weather menu included delicate, oceanic fried smelts; Canadian bacon with a refreshing corn relish and wonderful, housemade bread; a crisp, perfectly seasoned pork schnitzel; and striped bass with brown butter topped with sunchoke chips. To end, what else but Canada’s favorite dessert, an exquisite butter tart.
The wine list is not exhaustive, but it’s hard to go wrong. Every bottle was something I wanted to drink, whether a dry riesling from Forge in the Finger Lakes, a white blend from Luis Seabra in the Douro or a teroldego from Elisabetta Foradori in Trentino. Almost every bottle is under $100. I settled on a focused, gentle 2018 Savigny-les-Beaune aux Clous from Louis Chenu Père & Filles.
2965 North Lincoln Avenue, dearmargaretchi.com.
Cellar Door Provisions
This small, spare, amiable restaurant in Logan Square on the northwest side offers just a few modest yet beautifully detailed dishes on its ever-changing menu and a concise, well-chosen list of natural wines almost entirely under $100.
You might begin with a 2021 Le Rose from Ca’ de Noci in Emilia-Romagna, a light, fresh sparkling malvasia that is so good you won’t want to stop drinking it. That went brilliantly with fried onions tempura-style with romesco sauce and an earthy pig’s head terrine.
We followed that up with a 2021 riesling from Jean Ginglinger in Alsace, a stony, floral wine that was alive in the glass, superb with cheesy gnocchi in a savory ham broth and nutty braised broccoli rabe.
Neither the menu nor the list is exhaustive, but with either, it was hard to go wrong.
3025 West Diversey Avenue, cellardoorprovisions.com.
Obélix
Monday brunch, as this excellent French bistro in River North calls that day’s midday meal, comes with a bubbly benefit: half-price bottles of Champagne. It has another thing going for it, too. While Obélix looks like a modern spot for hushed business meetings, situated in a nondescript downtown building, it’s actually relaxed and unpretentious, the kind of place business people go to escape uptight offices.
The food is classic French with a few creative touches. A beautifully composed pâté en croûte was made with wild boar and duck, while a generous Lyonnaise salad was topped with a duck egg, crisp duck confit and duck fat croutons. This being brunch, Obélix offered deviations from the standard fare, like merguez served as a hot dog and Korean-style fried chicken on a burger bun, with excellent frites.
The wine list is almost entirely French and contains predictably expensive Burgundies, Bordeaux and other trophies. But it also offers plenty of bottles under $100, including some gems, like a 2020 Brézème from Éric Texier, an excellent syrah from the Côtes-du-Rhône, and a 2019 Domaine de Galouchey Vin de Jardin, a delicious natural Bordeaux. And if you come midday Monday, Champagne is a treat and a great value.
700 North Sedgwick Street, obelixchicago.com.
The Village at Italian Villages
Even if you’ve never been to the Village in the Loop, you most likely know the genre. Sinatra ate there. So did Capone. At nearly a century old, covered with photos of celebrities of the past, it’s the sincere incarnation of the sort of place Carbone was meant to parody and augment.
The wine list, however, is enormous and astounding. You will not find cutting edge Italian wines here, but you will see deep reserves of Italian classics here, including older vintages of Brunellos, Barolos and Super Tuscans, a label coined in the 1980s for top Tuscan wines that did not conform to appellation rules.
The Village is red wine territory, but you might start with a crisp sparkling wine like a 2016 Ferrari Perlé Rosé Riserva, with its mild but pure scent of berries. Where to go after that? I chose a lovely expressive Barolo, a 2012 Renato Ratti Conca, which I thought was a good value at $130.
The unsurprising Italian American food is a mixed bag — terrific beef ravioli served under an ocean of meaty red sauce, and sweet, tender eggplant parmigiana. But veal marsala was bland and muddy. Stick with red sauce and enjoy exploring the list, with upward of 1,200 bottles.
71 West Monroe Street, thevillage-chicago.com.
Rose Mary
This sprawling restaurant in the West Loop manages to straddle the Adriatic Sea, blending Italian and Croatian elements in what the chef, Joe Flamm, calls “Adriatic drinking food.” The wine list is wide-ranging, with concentrations from France, Germany and the United States, but the most exciting element is the small selection of Eastern European wines from Slovenia and Croatia.
These might include a lively sparkling refosco rosé from Rodica, an organic winery in Slovenia, or a Vinas Mora Andreis, a fresh, bright, natural Croatian red made of the babic grape, which tastes like a combination of pinot noir and gamay.
These wines go beautifully with Adriatic dishes like burek, a flaky pastry filled with chard and cheeses, grilled clams in a shockingly green herbal sauce, mezzaluna pasta in a bright duck ragù and tender lamb saddle with roasted carrots, full of garlic and herbs and served off the bone like a porterhouse.
Rose Mary is by no means a sedate date place. It’s lively, maybe even boisterous in the best possible way.
932 West Fulton Market, rosemarychicago.com.
El Che
Not far from Rose Mary in the West Loop is El Che, an Argentine steak house with a superb wine list made up entirely of South American bottles.
Yes, you can drink inexpensively here, with many wines under $100 like, among whites, a liter of Pipeño Blanco from A Los Viñateros Bravos, a farmer’s blend from Itata in Chile, or an Argentine sémillon from Mendel in Mendoza. But this is an opportunity to try some of the better reds South America has to offer, like a 2020 Concreto malbec from Zuccardi, a superb, minerally malbec, or even splurge on something special, like a 2016 Zuccardi Finca Piedra Infinita for $360.
Reds like these are meant for beef. El Che’s are all cooked over wood coals. Options include a dry-aged strip, which has all the funk and tang you look for in dry-aging, or, if its available, a picanha, a smaller cut like a rump steak. The crisp beef-fat fries are not to be missed, while an endive salad is an archetypal steakhouse salve for the conscience.
845 West Washington Boulevard, elchechicago.com.
Webster’s Wine Bar
This sprawling neighborhood spot with a welcoming vibe is the granddaddy of Chicago wine bars, having opened in 1994 in Lincoln Park and still going strong in its second location in Logan Square.
The wine list, primarily European, is wise, seemingly tempered by years of experience. It resists the temptation to offer a bunch of trophy labels either too young or unaffordable to any but the wealthy. Instead, it’s impeccably chosen, with bottles selected to drink now.
With oysters, I drank an excellent biodynamically farmed 2020 Boissonneuse Chablis from Julien Brocard, combining the seashell character of Chablis with the richness of the 2020 vintage. The food extends beyond classic wine bar fare to include pasta, seafood and a steak frites.
2601 North Milwaukee Avenue, websterwinebar.com.
Giant
This small, casual restaurant in Logan Square, practices a considered eclecticism in both its food and its wine. The food combinations and juxtapositions are unconventional with an overriding goal of deliciousness. The same is true with wine.
Consider dishes like sweet, tangy Japanese eggplant, flavored with South Asian spices and served with pita, or okonomiyaki, eggy Japanese pancakes under a pile of greens, a riot of textures and flavors. Chiramonte, a tortelloni-like pasta, is served in a nutty lentil ragù with mint and bright Meyer lemon, a brilliantly balanced dish.
The worldly, beautifully chosen wine list follows suit, with plenty of versatile, refreshing bottles, the vast majority priced at under $100. I particularly enjoyed a fresh, herbal 2021 Sonoma trousseau gris from Jolie Laide, which came alive in the glass, and a graceful crunchy 2022 gamay from Ochota Barrels in the Adelaide Hills of Australia.
3209 West Armitage Avenue, 773-252-0997, giantrestaurant.com.
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