Chicago has plenty of tasting menus with luxury ingredients and intricate platings. Feld, which opened in 2024, is different. Chef-owner Jake Potashnick (pictured above) calls his approach “relationship-to-table,” which sounds as earnest as a public television children’s show but gets at the sense of connection that makes this place special. In two years, Feld has progressed from a thoughtful restaurant to a joyful one to a paradigm buster. Diners sit along the walls, facing a kitchen they surround, and meet every cook and server, in turn, as they introduce dishes. The initial crazy-pants ballet of sending out 25 courses one by one has morphed into a tighter production. A flurry of one-bite zingers (a pickled strawberry, a lardo crumpet, a radish tart) precedes progressively larger (though still small) dishes: just-picked spinach in a miraculous dashi, a scallop grilled to a crackle on one side and perfectly raw on the other. Wow, wow, wow. As with many tasting menus, the meat courses are too much, too late, but you’ll finish the evening strong with fantastic desserts, a superb digestif selection, and s’mores around the back fire pit. For those of us who balk at tweezer food, Feld feels like a new dawn.

Price: $$$$$
Address: 2018 W. Chicago Ave.
Website: feldrestaurant.com