You need only consider its name to know that Creepies is a fabulous weirdo, a restaurant that has no choice but to be itself. After scouting any number of creepy old sites (hence the name) for a sophomore project to follow the acclaimed Elske, David and Anna Posey began to assemble their oddball vision. The room had to give that Lynchian tingle that historic taverns in Chicago do better than anywhere else, and it had to have the tight bustle of a French bistro. The menu, meanwhile, wouldn’t be a timeworn collection of French clichés and safe bets but that of a Parisian-style neo-bistro showcasing distinctive recipes with a deep sense of place. That place would be the Midwest. The couple found the ideal person to execute the vision in chef Tayler Ploshehanski, who oversees the most novel assortment of dishes to debut this past year.

What’s for dinner? Mussels hiding under a cumulus of giardiniera froth, a bubbly gratin of celery root dotted with tender escargot, and a super-crisp sweetbread schnitzel with bright, pickley sauce ravigote. The way meals come together here makes perfect sense while also being totally bonkers. You might love some dishes but have notes on others, then talk to a friend who had the exact opposite reaction. You might find that the freekeh crêpe that was once one of your favorites has morphed into something you wouldn’t order again — but have you tried the luscious oeuf mayonnaise? Amazing. The well-versed servers are people you look forward to seeing again, and the weirdly shaped room — two storefronts connected by a back corridor — has its creepy charms, like a basement rec room in a 1960s ranch house. The natural wine list connects well with the offbeat food, and the few cocktails are all bangers. More than anything, Creepies is a pure original, a restaurant that taps into the soul of Chicago. —  E.J. AND JACLYN RIVAS

Devin Denzer never ate seafood growing up in Minnesota — “My mom liked well-done steaks and fried chicken” — and he has never been to Scandinavia or Japan. So what he describes as his “Nordic-Japanese” cuisine is an idea rather than a lived experience, something he has cobbled together from past cooking gigs, great restaurant meals, and Noma cookbooks. Somehow he has melded it all into the year’s most appealing new tasting menu. (Critic’s disclosure: My daughter is in a relationship with Atsumeru’s sous chef, Tony Esparza.) Denzer has what you might call a soft boy palate, and every dish, such as a dashi custard topped with ocean trout and a bursting-fresh spot prawn in a cloud of coconut-galangal espuma, tells you more about it. Dinner begins with a house cocktail and canapés (including a fantastic gougère filled with Gjetost cream) in the basement bar and proceeds through 10 to 12 courses, culminating in an oolong ice dolloped with dulse seaweed cream and shingled in dehydrated buttermilk chips. It comes in at a comparatively inexpensive $165, and is all of a piece: a story of cold waters and gentle flavors that linger. Denzer is a chef who has something to say. —  J.M.

If you eat at independent restaurants, you’ve learned to expect that moment when a server places a plate and begins, “This is our chef’s version of …” Most creative cooks compel themselves to make even the most familiar dishes their own. Not Sujan Sarkar and Sanchit Sahu, who spent so much time scouring the vast world of regional Indian cooking traditions for inspiration that they apparently had no place on their menu for ego. A meal here is like a college survey course — Indian Regional Cooking 101 — but one taught with impeccable skill. Each dish airlifts you to a specific place. You’ll find yourself in the southwestern state of Karnataka, eating a fluffy dosa crisped in the cultured butter called benne, then up in Kolkata’s Chinatown for a chile fish fry and in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk market for dahi bhalla (lentil fritters bathed in yogurt and chutneys). Down in Kerala, a crab milagu fry awaits: The whole Dungeness comes with gloves, picks, and kallappam flatbread for sopping up the black pepper curry — a feeling of complete and total transport. —  J.M.

Galit is one of Chicago’s best restaurants, but a meal there means a commitment to a four-course family-style feast. For those of us who paradoxically want to eat less of chef Zach Engel’s food but more often, this next-door sibling is a godsend. An all-day café, it offers a fine grab-and-go counter for coffee and Mary Eder-McClure’s shakshuka buns in the morning and plenty of space at lunch to crack open your laptop over a nice grilled chicken salad or grain bowl. At night, Engel lets loose, and all aspects of his culinary personality — Ashkenazi, Southern, Levantine — blend into something fresh. You scoop up butternut squash baba ghanoush dip with sesame-studded simit bread, then cut into fried green tomatoes with shrimp rémoulade and the spicy green condiment zhoug. Pork schnitzel stays crisp under mustard butter, while the Big Sis lamb burger, piled high with all the fixings as well as za’atar mayo and tangy amba mustard, has become a city sensation. It’s the comfort food you’ve never had before. —  J.M.

At Jenner Tomaska’s first restaurant, Esmé, the tasting menu is filled with surprises and visual art, and it owes much to Grant Achatz’s Next, where Tomaska honed his craft. For his second act, he signed on as executive chef-partner at the Alston, where he designed an over-the-top steakhouse menu and introduced Chicago to $225 duck. Yet it’s this “bistro” (really an upscale French restaurant), Petite Edith, where he shows us his superpower. Tomaska cooks with the kind of old-school refinement, finesse, and technique that have been all but lost to time. Settle into the U-shaped bar with a vermouth-forward Vesper served with caviar olives, courtesy of crack beverage director Stevan Miller, then share brochettes of confit mussels and merguez or rose shrimp set over a burnt lemon Dijonnaise that you’ll finish with a finger swipe. The seafood-heavy menu features old friends like skate wing with fondant potatoes, but if you opt for meat, the stuffed pig trotter is insane. It’s a precise recreation of Pierre Koffmann’s famous recipe that involves mousse made with foie gras and sweetbreads and a brilliant demi-glace sauce. Even the breads are major undertakings, such as a three-cheese baguette that is a Stouffer’s French bread pizza by way of Escoffier. Every dish is a production number. —  J.M.

Despite the name, you don’t have to order omakase at this Edomae sushi charmer. When you’re not seated at the counter, you can choose whatever you want from a nightly selection of wild and quality farmed fish — buttery kanpachi, umami-rich sawara mackerel, and the sweetest Hokkaido uni. Chef Timmy Chen buys well, dry-ages the fish as needed, cuts the perfect mouthful, and dresses each piece of nigiri with a flavorful condiment that enhances its flavor. His negi toro and spicy scallop hand rolls make for great final bites. If you do want omakase, plan ahead, as this $98 feast sells out well in advance. The 15 courses include several kinds of wild Pacific fish, such as sea robin. Whichever way you go, Omakase Box manages to nail a quality-to-price ratio that eludes everyone else in the local sushi realm. —  E.J.

So many restaurants these days serve dishes built for sharing. But some, like this one, still remind you that true satisfaction comes from a well-thought-out plate that stays right in front of you. Recipes from throughout the African diaspora inform executive chef Rahim Muhammad’s culinary style, and he puts them together so that the flavors build with each mouthful. Rah-sta pasta with spinach, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes in a thick coconut cream sauce blares a loud tune but hits delicately, thanks to fresh, sweet thyme and the kind of stealth spice that takes a moment to register. A whole plantain, split, hollowed out like a canoe, and filled with beef or suya-spiced mushrooms, arrives with Creole tomato sauce, rice and peas, and burnt feta. The room design, with its overlay of colors and patterns, evinces the same warmth as the food. —  J.M.

This Thai noodle shop recreates the thrill of a Bangkok night market. The color-saturated dining room primes your senses, but it’s Aomjai Phumpardit’s cooking that vibrates with a street vendor’s blistering energy. Every week she selects a dozen or so dishes from her repertoire and posts the menu online — first on the restaurant’s Thai-language Facebook page (where it’s called Mother Aomjai) and then in English on Instagram as Noodles Party (a name she inherited with the previous owner’s sign). There are recurring dishes to crave, like an exceptional khao soi, a coconut-rich curry soup with stewed chicken, crisp-fried noodles, and a halo of fresh turmeric. Boat noodles, inky with dark soy, are sweet and tangy enough to make the slips of stewed liver taste balancing and necessary. Don’t miss the non-noods: Crispy pork with nam jim jaew dip is a marvel of texture, and som tum papaya salad arrives ready for you to adjust to your taste with the kruang prung, a table caddy filled with various chiles and condiments. Thai expats must take one look at this essential street stall offering and feel like they’re home. —  E.J.

This brash collab between Lettuce Entertain You and chef Thai Dang of HaiSous is a tropical fantasy that paints Southeast Asia in broad strokes. With its great cocktails by Lettuce drinks guru Kevin Beary and a design that suggests a moody Singaporean bar reimagined by a manga artist, this place hits a harmony of right notes. Think of it as a 1960s Polynesian supper club decolonized and reborn: Trader Vic’s minus the offensive stereotypes plus hot spice. (Try the grilled wagyu nam tok. Pow!) Dang designs his shared plates for people who travel enough to appreciate his fusion inspirations. Standouts include prawn toast stuffed into youtiao (Chinese crullers), lobster pad thai served in a clay pot, and a clever-delicious pairing of crisp confit duck with panang curry. Once the hectic lookie-lou crowd moves on, expect to see a great restaurant emerge. —  E.J.

It seems like every year Chicago produces an Italian-American restaurant that perfectly captures the season’s comfort food obsessions. Zarella, from the Boka Restaurant Group, is the latest, with a menu that reads like a checklist of every old-school fave that’s suddenly trending again, like Kate Bush after a new season of Stranger Things drops. Recipes from this kitchen (overseen by journeyman chefs Chris Pandel and Lee Wolen) strike familiar poses, then surprise you with how cannily they’ve been leveled up. Starters range from the crispest fried calamari and peppers with Calabrian chile aïoli to a hummus-smooth roasted carrot dip. While you can get a nice enough chicken parm, you’re really here to compare and contrast the two kinds of pizza: the tavern-style, with an undulating, feather-light crust, and the sturdier artisan, its blistered ring a halo of bubbly crunch. The dining room looks like a designer redo of Maggiano’s, which in its own way makes it all the more lovable. —  J.M.

Chinatown has been in upheaval. Beloved Cantonese dim sum houses like Cai have shuttered, and the Lao collection of regional Chinese restaurants has been reduced to the original Lao Sze Chuan. International chains hawk ramen and Korean fried chicken, and every time you blink, a tatty old-timer has morphed into a glossy new hot pot house with robot servers. Then there’s Nine Garden, a restaurant that brings back that old thrill, that feeling of cracking open a huge menu and wanting to try everything. The lineup is mostly Shanghainese, with a bit of Sichuan, and you’ll quickly find your faves. For most diners, that means starting with the soup, which has a lion’s head meatball so soft it seems unreal. From there, your favorites may include a snakehead fish fillet in ginger-scallion sauce, dongpo pork belly, or sweet soy smoked fish. Go with a big group, as your list of must-orders will keep growing. —  E.J.

This little pizzeria, with its checkered floor, simple white tablecloths, and back bar set with high-top leatherette stools, looks like so many other modest Italian spots in the neighborhood. Yet it’s the Chicago restaurant that broke most prominently onto the national stage this past year. And for good reason: Owners Billy and Cecily Federighi have shown everyone the inherent greatness of tavern-style pizza — how a long cure can transform a thin crust and what kind of tomato sauce stands up to pepperoni cups with hot honey or sausage and giardiniera. The flavors and textures open in waves; you’ll need to utter “Wow” at least three times before resuming conversation. The trim menu features a few appetizers and salads, bubbly focaccia, and, just for kicks, caviar service. This is pizza worth celebrating. —  LUCY HEWETT

The word “omakase” has jumped the tuna. No longer contained to sushi, the term now signifies any meal a chef courses out before you at a counter, from the great taco omakase at Cariño to the delightful and visually arresting progression of intricate small plates and glam hand rolls that Mari Katsumura and Adam Sindler propose at this 12-seat counter in the heart of Old Town. These two chefs and business partners represent Chicago Japanese restaurant royalty: she, the daughter of Yoshi’s Café’s Yoshi Katsumura and a renowned chef in her own right; he, the fourth-generation scion of the family that founded the pioneering Kamehachi, right next door to Sho. Together, they offer a wholly original parade of bites that nods to their shared heritage. A hand roll comes with a fat slice of seared wagyu beef and umami cotton candy, and green tea soft serve over a bed of sweet red beans arrives with a drizzle of cream made from sake lees. This meal is all swagger, and it leaves you smiling. —  J.M.