Best Italian in Chicago 2026

Sarah Grueneberg trained at the Culinary Institute LeNotre in Houston and worked at Spiaggia under Tony Mantuano from 2005 to 2014 — chef de cuisine from 2008. She finished as Top Chef Texas runner-up in 2012 and opened Monteverde on Madison Street in the West Loop in 2015. The pastificio — a glass-walled pasta lab at the back of the dining room — runs eight to ten pastas nightly: cacio whey ricotta cavatelli, agnolotti dal plin, bigoli with anchovy and breadcrumb, ruchetta with brown-butter quail. The James Beard Best Chef Great Lakes followed in 2017. The dining room is bright, generous-spaced, and the front banquette is the right table for a wine-led dinner. The cocktail program is competent and the amaro section is serious. Reservations open thirty days out at 10:00 AM on Resy.

RJ Melman, son of Lettuce Entertain You founder Rich Melman, opened RPM Italian on Illinois Street in River North in 2012 with TV-host partners Bill and Giuliana Rancic. Doug Psaltis, ex-Daniel Boulud and Le Cirque, runs the kitchen. The room is the Lettuce-group benchmark for a city power dinner — front banquettes for the political class, dining room for the everyone-else, a bar that fills standing-room past 8:00 PM. The lobster-pasta cart wheeled to the table, where a server cracks the lobster and tosses it through fresh tagliarini, is the menu signature and the visible-flex order. The spaghetti carbonara and the gnocchi alla bolognese hold the rest. Wine list is California and Italy deep without being intimidating.

Joe Flamm came up at Spiaggia, won Top Chef Season 15 in 2018, and opened Rose Mary on Fulton Market in 2020 — the concept is the Adriatic, Italian on the west coast, Croatian on the east, served as a single coherent kitchen. The orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe is the lineage Italian plate; the pljeskavica (Balkan grilled meat patty) and the wood-fire whole branzino represent the Croatian half. The room is bright and friendly, family-style large tables in the center, two-tops along the windows. Wine list overweights Friuli, Slovenia, and Dalmatia — a serious cross-Adriatic program rather than a Tuscan formality. Reservations on Resy thirty days out. Flamm is on the floor most weekday nights.

Joe Frillman opened Daisies on Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square in 2017 — brother Tim Frillman runs the farm sourcing program from a partner farm in Galena. The menu rewrites itself weekly around what is harvested: peas in May, tomatoes in August, kabocha squash by October, root vegetables through winter. The cacio e pepe is the constant; the pasta program runs four to six options nightly, all extruded in-house. The seasonal vegetable plates are the cross-program move — the pickled-and-roasted radish, the Sungold tomato salad, the charred broccolini. Daisies is one of the few Logan Square rooms with a serious natural wine program and the cocktail bar runs amari-led. The room is small, warm, and the conversation register is the right one for two.

Pino Luongo, the New York restaurateur behind Coco Pazzo Manhattan and Le Madri, opened the Chicago Coco Pazzo on Hubbard Street in River North in 1992 inside the Marshall Field warehouse — exposed brick, twenty-foot ceilings, the dining room organized around a wood-fire grill at the back. The bistecca alla Fiorentina (40oz Florentine porterhouse, T-bone, grilled rare over wood, sliced to order at the table) is the headline cut and the menu signature. The pasta program runs traditional — pappardelle al cinghiale, tagliolini with white truffle in season, ravioli di zucca. The wine list overweights Tuscany — a serious Brunello and Super Tuscan section, with verticals of Sassicaia and Ornellaia available on request. Ownership has shifted across the decades; the Tuscan identity is intact.

Danny Grant earned two Michelin stars at RIA in the Elysian Hotel (now Waldorf Astoria) and a single star at NoMI; he opened Maple & Ash with Jim Lasky, then opened Etta in Bucktown in 2019 as the more casual wood-fired counterpoint. The hearth at the back of the dining room runs the program: charred whole branzino, oven-roasted pork chop, wood-fire pizzas with house-cured pancetta and burrata. The wood-baked focaccia comes to the table first, oil-pooled and Maldon-salted, on a wooden board. The pasta program runs five to six options — the rigatoni alla vodka and the cacio e pepe are the constants. Etta the Bucktown room is the original; the Scottsdale location is the Arizona expansion. The room is bright and high-ceilinged with a Bucktown brunch crowd by day and a more serious dinner room past 7:00 PM.

Tony Priolo trained at the Culinary Institute of America, worked at Coco Pazzo under Pino Luongo's group, then opened Piccolo Sogno with partner Ciro Longobardo in 2008 at the corner of Halsted and Grand. The cooking is traditional regional Italian — bucatini all'amatriciana, pappardelle al cinghiale, vitello tonnato — without the modernist intervention of Monteverde or the celebrity-room theatre of RPM. The wood-oven runs Napoletana-style pizzas through the dinner service and the garden patio in summer is one of the best outdoor dining rooms in the city. The wine list overweights Italian regions outside Tuscany — a serious Piedmont, Sicily and Campania program. Priolo is on the floor most nights. The room is the conversation room of the eight, register that splits the difference between RPM's loud and Daisies's intimate.

John Coletta opened Quartino on State Street in River North in 2005 as a Roman-Italian small-plate room — the format is the cicchetti bar of Venice meets the cured-meat counter of Rome, served at marble bar tops and small tables. The cured-meat board (prosciutto di Parma 24-month, finocchiona, soppressata, mortadella) is the test order; the gnocchi, the spaghetti carbonara, and the meatballs are the secondary plates. The signature is the tap-wine service — house-blended quartini (quarter-litres) poured straight from steel kegs at $9–14, which makes the room the lowest-friction wine order in River North. Quartino runs as the entry-point Italian on this list — the value sits at $50–80 per person with two pours of tap wine and a cured-meat board.