The best places to eat and drink in Chicago

Looking for something to eat?

Here are all of the Tribune Food and Dining team’s guides to different food and restaurants throughout Chicago.

When Chicago Tribune food critics Louisa Chu and Nick Kindelsperger began sketching out plans for a new list of the best restaurants in Chicago and the suburbs, it became clear just how many questions the process would pose.

Here are the 25 best new restaurants in and around Chicago. Happy eating. — Ariel Cheung, Food editor

The Chicago Tribune’s annual dining awards are back, and (if you’ll pardon the hubris) better than ever.

From a reluctant gyros restaurant, to a resilient caramel cake bakery, to an exquisite Asian-inspired virtual endeavor, you picked some extraordinary winners for our 11th annual Readers’ Choice Food Awards.

There’s something undeniably special about cookies and our time-honored tradition of sharing them, particularly this time of year. Deliciously gift-able and grab-able, they’re the perfect holiday dessert.

Chicago has 68 Bib Gourmand recipients, 17 restaurants with one Michelin star, and five with two stars. Alinea remains the city’s sole Michelin three-star restaurant.

The James Beard Foundation Awards returned to Chicago in June after a two-year hiatus, celebrating the best and brightest of the culinary world on a national scale.

See how many you’ve checked off, and start making a list of the rest.

A wave of city chefs have revolutionized Chicago’s bagel scene. Some are East Coast expats determined to re-create the bagels they grew up eating. Others are dough obsessives, who have spent years researching how to craft perfect bagels every single time.

The 25 best burgers in Chicago, ranked.

Here’s where you should place your next takeout order.

For those unfamiliar with Chicago’s Italian beef sandwich, it initially can sound like an enigma. It’s sort of a roast beef sandwich, albeit one where beef broth plays an integral role. This makes it similar in spirit to a French dip, but it’s both more extravagant and less polite. No one would ever confuse the two.

When visiting from out of town, time is fleeting. Choices must be made. While it’s difficult to point someone toward just one of the Chicago area’s 220 or so breweries, I forged a quick answer — actually a few of them, depending on the beer drinker in question.

Whether a subtle whiff of campfire on a cool autumn breeze or the less-than-subtle lure of a pumpkin spice latte, the spicy, savory harbingers of fall spark a shift in the food and wine we crave.

Of the dozens of ready-to-drink cocktails on shelves, here are the ones to savor — and those to avoid.