About Top of Chicago.

The same handful of marquee rooms with publicists get covered to exhaustion, while the neighborhood spots locals drive across town for on a Tuesday night stay buried under sponsored listings on the platforms most people search.

Chicago's marquee coverage runs on a loop: deep-dish for the tourists, a handful of Fulton Market openings, and whatever's trending. That leaves out most of how this city eats. Little Village birrieria, an Argyle Street pho spot, a Devon Avenue kitchen, a tavern-cut pizza place your neighborhood has argued about for decades. Top of Chicago exists because the everyday canon (the Italian beef, the dog dragged through the garden, rib tips out of an aquarium smoker) deserves the same scrutiny as a Michelin room. We built this for the city underrated next to New York and LA, on its own terms.

We cover Chicago the way Chicagoans actually eat it: tavern-style thin crust alongside deep-dish, Italian beef stands and Chicago dogs, the Pilsen and Little Village taquerias, Humboldt Park's jibarito, Argyle Street's Vietnamese kitchens, Devon Avenue's South Asian corridor, Chinatown, Greektown, South Side BBQ, and the West Loop's chef-driven fine dining. The Loop and River North get covered too, but they don't get to be the whole story. Every neighborhood eats; we track all of it. We track 0+ restaurants across the metro against the same methodology; the full method is laid out at How We Work.

Top of Chicago is published by Top Rated Network LLC, an independent, veteran-owned Las Vegas media company that runs city dining guides on the same methodology across the country. The rankings and the writing are produced by this site’s own desk.

The site is small by design. No investors, no growth pressure, no quarterly board meeting that needs engagement numbers to keep climbing. The rankings answer to the data; the data answers to the city.

The methodology (Bayesian-weighted ratings, weekly recalculation) is the same one Top Rated Network uses across its other city guides. The editorial voice is local to Chicago. The sites themselves are built and maintained by WebIgniter, our in-house web studio.