Best Mexican Restaurants in Chicago

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Amelia’s Mestizo Grill
In 2009, Eusebio Garcia, a veteran of MK and Gioco—and a hero at Pilsen’s Mundial Cocina—split from his wife, from Pilsen, and from sight. He landed in Canaryville, a few blocks from the notorious limestone Union Stockyards gate, a.k.a. the middle of restaurant Nowheresville, whereupon he set to work. His goal? To re-create the menu that made him a legend at Mundial. He’s gone beyond that at this bright BYO, with the kind of clear-flavored standouts that wouldn’t be out of place at Frontera Grill, like the trucha en papa cruzada, a delicate farm-raised trout topped with a crisp, almost caramelized potato in a roasted tomato and guajillo brown butter sauce. Suddenly 46th and Halsted doesn’t seem like such a hike. 4559 S. Halsted St.; 773-538-8200
Photograph: Courtesy of the restaurant
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Chilam Balam
If you’re the kind of diner who’s interested in the pedigree of your chef, check out Chuy Valencia’s: He grew up in Sonoma obsessed with Alice Waters, summered with his parents in Colima, and was a sous-chef to Rick Bayless at 20. Such details intrigue us because they explain why we can find oven-roasted bone marrow with caramelized chiles toreados in a cramped Lake View basement. Valencia, now 24 and the chef/partner at this lo-fi spot (read as cash only, BYO), has the cojones to pull off innovative small-plate wonders like fresh oysters with muskmelon mignonette and homemade hot sauce. If he’s packing the house every night with this menu, who knows where the kid will be by 30? Hopefully, in a bigger basement in Lake View. 3023 N. Broadway; 773-296-6901
Photograph: Anna Knott
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Frontera Grill
Rick Bayless is in the eye of a perfect storm. First the man added Xoco, Chicago’s ultimate street-food destination, to his temple of fine Mexican cooking (Frontera, pictured) and temple of really fine Mexican cooking (Topolobampo). Then he won Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, and the White House tapped him to cook a state dinner. The result: a crush of culinary tourists milling about Clark and Illinois streets to land a glimpse of Señor Rick—and maybe score a pork carnitas torta and some warm churros. (Both are astounding at Xoco.) Funny thing is, while Xoco launched itself to instant-classic status, both Frontera and Topo lost a step, exhibiting a touch of carelessness in service and timing that Bayless never tolerated before. Still, the food remains at the highest levels: Just taste Topo’s complex tamal de huitlacoche with epazote and summer squash from the chef’s garden, or Frontera’s seviche of sashimi-grade Hawaiian ahi tuna with a complex Mexican version of chimichurri, dry Jack chicharrón, and pine nut crunch. Despite a misstep here and there, Bayless is still so far ahead of the competition, it’s not even a fair fight. 445–449 N. Clark St.; 312-661-1434 (Frontera and Topo), 312-334-3688 (Xoco)
Photograph: Courtesy of the restaurant
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Topolobampo
Photograph: Courtesy of the restaurant
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Xoco
Photograph: Todd Urban
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La Casa de Samuel
This unassuming Little Village storefront is an example of why most gringos have trouble finding the really good Mexican restaurants. At a glance, it looks just like hundreds of other Mexican storefronts around town, and the menu, filled with gross-outica like rattlesnake, baby eels, and bull’s testicles, doesn’t help. Your first hint that it’s something special is the old lady making corn tortillas in a mini kitchen in the front window. The second: Samuel Linares, the Acapulco-born chef/owner, has a rare touch with Guerrerense flavors. If you order the wonderful braised goat with sweet chipotle sauce and fresh guacamole (and wrap it in one of those masa beauties) or the browned and crispy short ribs a la plancha sliced across the bone, you will feel very smart. And you may find yourself exploring more unfamiliar storefronts in the future. 2834 W. Cermak Rd.; 773-376-7474
Photograph: Anna Knott
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La Fonda del Gusto
We wish we knew how to quit you, Dudley Nieto. From Adobo Grill to Zocalo, every time you pop up at another restaurant, making grand Puebla promises, we get all excited and say this is finally The One. Then you split before the mole is dry. So we’ll just enjoy your cochinita pibil (pictured), an amazing slow-cooked pork sitting shreddy and crispy on its fried tostada bed, while we can. We’ll dream of rollitos, sweet plantains stuffed with refried black beans and topped with queso and bitter berros (watercress). We would even talk up your sopa tarasca, a fiery pasilla-flavored soup, if we thought you would still be at this friendly Wicker Park spot come winter. Let’s make a deal: You stay, and we promise you’ll have at least a few regulars. 1408 N. Milwaukee Ave.; 773-278-6100
Photograph: Courtesy of the restaurant
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Mexique
Perhaps you’ve heard about Grant Achatz’s upcoming restaurant, Next, which captures various times and places—say, Paris 1912—with seasonal menus. Well, Mexique did it first. If Carlos Gaytan (pictured) had to pick a locus for his cuisine, it would be Mexico City 1864, when French occupiers had their way with Mexican ingredients. Now, it’s pretty unlikely that Emperor Maximilian I and his wife were dining on risotto with morels, guajillo peppers, and short ribs braised with red wine in Chapultepec Castle. But Gaytan’s basic approach—a polished Gallic-Mex mash-up—is neither gimmicky nor flashy. It’s just good. And if you’re going to attempt sopes with escargots or braised pork shoulder rillettes in achiote and tequila these days, you’d better know what you’re doing. Otherwise, you could suffer the same fate as poor Maximilian, who was executed in 1867. 1529 W. Chicago Ave.; 312-850-0288
Photograph: Anna Knott
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Mom’s Old Recipe Mexican Restaurant
This Northwest Side gem fulfills every Mexican restaurant stereotype we want to believe. Malena Basave and Ana Arriaga, sisters from a small town near Cuernavaca, grew up in their mother’s kitchen, learned from Mami to make enchiladas verdes and tacos acorazados, and moved to the United States, where the memory of Mom’s food pulled them back into the kitchen. Every ray of their sun-dappled childhood gets poured into the food at Mom’s: smoky carne asada, handmade corn tortillas and salsa, and buttery shrimp ajillo (pictured) with slices of guajillo peppers in a sauce made with cranberry red wine. “The other day, I went to a table and the guy there started crying,” says Basave. “He told me the sauce on the huarachitos reminded him of his grandmother’s.” 5760 N. Milwaukee Ave.; 773-467-1009
Photograph: Anna Knott
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Nuevo Léon
Before your meal even starts, you’ve got a crush on this homey Norteño standby, where nothing that matters has changed since 1962. There are dangerously spicy pickled carrots and peppers on the table, ceramic iguanas on the wall, and Pilsen families slurping menudo and horchatas. A waitress in a frumpy peasant blouse brings out a basket of hot tortilla chips and a free meatball that’s ugly, unnecessary, and utterly wonderful. By the time you get your chicken mole—an over-the-top juicy bird in a toasty mole that you soak up with homemade flour tortillas and drown with a six-pack of Tecate you brought yourself—either you’re in love or your heart is cold and black. (Cash only.) 1515 W. 18th St.; 312-421-1517
Photograph: Anna Knott
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¡Salpicón!
The hardest thing for a chef to do is to show up in the same kitchen day after day, year after year, and continue to excel long after the excitement of a new restaurant has faded. That’s exactly what Priscila Satkoff accomplishes at ¡Salpicón!, which keeps chugging along after 15 years in Old Town. If you’ve forsaken ¡Salpicón! for a younger mistress, you’re missing out. The newly remodeled space still has the sharpest tequila list in town and a menu packed with standouts, such as salmon al hinojo—two delicate grilled fillets on fennel and spinach in a creamy tomatillo-serrano sauce. Prices may have quietly crept up over the years, but so has the graciousness of the staff—and the reliability of Satkoff’s cooking. (Photo) Pastel tres Leches at ¡Salpicón! 1252 N. Wells St.; 312-988-7811
Photograph: Anna Knott
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Xni-Pec de Yucatán
Whenever a happy customer exits Xni-Pec (pronounced SHNEE-peck), he’s supposed to ring a bell in the vestibule to express his satisfaction. Needless to say, the damn thing chimes all evening, and the Contreras family always responds from the kitchen with a hearty “Bamba!” The tiny spot’s goofy enthusiasm volleys back and forth until it becomes impossible to resist. The airtight food doesn’t hurt, flaunting the heady achiote and habanero that color everything in the Yucatán Peninsula. That means fresh tilapia on handmade lime-soaked masa, marinated poc-chuc so honest it may as well be under oath, and crisp cinnamon buñuelo topped with piloncillo molasses. Xni-Pec is not so much a breath of fresh air as it is a blast of authentic ethnic cooking. 3755 Grand Blvd., Brookfield; 708-290-0082
Photograph: Courtesy of the restaurant

The dishes, drinks, and restaurants that make Chicago a Mexican food destination

By Jeff Ruby with Michael Nagrant, Rod O’Connor, and Denise Peñacerrada

October 18, 2010, 10:41 am

Last March, while celebrating Mexico’s upcoming bicentennial, Mayor Daley proclaimed 2010 the Year of Mexico in Chicago. Truer words have not emanated from city hall in years. Less than a century after the first surge of immigrants fled Jalisco, Michoacán, and Guanajato to avoid the revolution rocking their homeland, the Mexican influence in Chicago reaches almost everywhere—but particularly the world of food. In large part thanks to the million-plus Mexican Americans living in the Chicago area, the city and suburbs offer what may be the best place in America to unravel the complex regional nuances of Mexican cuisine. The streets teem with taquerías, birrerias, torterias, and mole houses. And where the upscale Mexican scene once consisted simply of ¡Salpicón! and Rick Bayless’s empire, innovative restaurants like Chilam Balam and Mexique now keep materializing left and right.

Here, the 12 top Mexican restaurants in Chicago: Launch the gallery.

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