2 Illinois Eateries Make New York Times Best Restaurants List

Nearly everyone has their own idea of a dream job, but I've got to think that among food-lovers, one of the greatest gigs in the world would be being one of the people who flies around the country and eats outstanding foods in beautiful restaurants and then writes about how great or awful or unremarkable those restaurants are.

Unfortunately, there's no college course you can take that will land you that exact job, because I would have signed up for it long ago if there were.

Some lucky staffers at the New York Times got a chance to do that dream job, and it looks like they made the most of it. 14 reporters and editors took 76 flights to sit down to over 200 meals in 33 states to come up with the Restaurant List 2025, and two of the 50 chosen this year are in Illinois.

The NYT List Changes Every Year, And Over Half Of The 50 Restaurants On This Year's List Opened After Last Year's List Came Out

The restaurants on the list are organized alphabetically by state. Sadly for residents, some states had no restaurants make the list. Specifically, Washington, Wisconsin and New Mexico. Then you've got California, which has multiple spots appearing on the list.

The two Illinois restaurants that did land on the list are both unsurprisingly in Chicago.

The first is Sanders BBQ Supply Co (1742 W. 99th St.). Here's what the NYT had to say:

One of the most irresistible Southern dishes in the country right now can be found in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago, about 12 miles south of the Loop and 530 miles north of Memphis. It’s the oxtail gumbo at Sanders BBQ, a soup-stew special whose spoon-coating gravy one can only hope is eventually available by the pint. Like all of the meat on the menu, the gumbo carries the whiff of hardwood smoke. The owner James Sanders’ staff, notably the pitmaster-chef Nick Kleutsch, is smoking some of the best barbecue outside Texas. In the process, Mr. Sanders advances a local barbecue tradition that dates to the Great Migration. Don’t skip the rib tips, the peach tea-smoked chicken wings or, if you’re here in the summer, the cucumber-watermelon salad.

The 2nd Illinois Eatery To Land On The Top 50 List Has A Distinct Latin Flavor and Influence

Cariño, located at 4662 N. Broadway, is a upscale restaurant with a Michelin Star that was awarded to them just last year:

The chef Norman Fenton is serious about process, whether it’s spherification or nixtimalization, both of which make their way to the plate across 12 or so exhilarating courses. He’s also not afraid of some fun (or real spice). The cheffed-up versions of Latin dishes — a chicken liver taco dorado, or a pumpernickel quesadilla with black garlic — are ingenious, but retain the elemental appeal of their traditional antecedents. The “Michelada” was actually an oyster topped with Clamato pearls and beer foam, but still played on the major chords of the traditional drink. The ravioli was a summer stunner, to behold and to taste, filled with earthy huitlacoche, swaddled in a sweet-corn foam and ringed with a tawny corona of fried corn silk. (After all that, the kitchen finds the creative reserves for a taco omakase, available only at 10 p.m.) The cooking here is a feat, and not soon forgotten.