Chicago's Most Decorated Table Feels Like Nobody's Watching
There are restaurants you go to for the accolades, and then there are restaurants where you forget you were counting them.
The kitchen smells like woodsmoke and something sweeter underneath, and you are sitting close enough to watch it happen.
That is the first thing about Smyth. Not the awards, though there are plenty of those. Not the tasting menu, though it is the best I have had in the United States. The first thing is that you sit essentially inside the kitchen, at a wood table in a room that looks more like a well-designed farmhouse than a three-Michelin-Star restaurant in Chicago's West Loop, and the whole operation unfolds in front of you without ceremony or distance.
Smyth is currently the No. 1 restaurant on North America's 50 Best Restaurants 2026, up from No. 4 on the inaugural 2025 list. It holds three Michelin Stars, which it earned in 2023 and has retained. It is the only restaurant in Chicago with that distinction. None of that is apparent when you walk in. What is apparent is that the people here are doing something serious, and that they want you close enough to feel it.
The Restaurant
Smyth sits at 177 N. Ada Street in Chicago's West Loop, on the ground floor of a building it shares withThe Loyalist, its more casual downstairs sibling. The space is warm without being precious. Exposed brick and wood, low lighting, an open kitchen that takes up a substantial portion of the room. There is no divide between the dining room and the people cooking in it.
The restaurant is named for Smyth County, Virginia, where Chef John Shields and Chef Karen Urie Shields spent years running Town House before returning to Chicago. That origin matters because it explains something about the philosophy of the place. This is not a restaurant that emerged from a city's fine dining ecosystem and worked its way up. It came from a period of deliberate remove, of cooking with local and foraged ingredients in rural Virginia, and then brought that sensibility back to an urban kitchen.
The result is a room that feels, improbably, both country and precise. Cozy enough that you can ask for a blanket and not feel strange about it. Technically accomplished enough that you understand exactly why it tops every list.
The Chefs
Chef John Shields and Chef Karen Urie Shields are a husband-and-wife team with one of the more interesting culinary histories in American cooking. Both came up through Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, where they met, John working as sous chef and Karen as head pastry chef.
He went on to Alinea under Grant Achatz. Then they left the city together for rural Virginia, rebuilt a little-known restaurant called Town House from the ground up, and earned national attention fast. The New York Times came. Food & Wine named John a Best New Chef in 2010. A James Beard nomination followed.
They came back to Chicago and opened Smyth in 2016. One Michelin star came within six weeks of opening. A second arrived in 2018. The third in 2023.
Karen leads pastry at Smyth, which is not a secondary role here. Her influence runs through the dessert sequence and into the menu's overall sensibility. The boundary between savory and sweet is not firm at Smyth, and that is largely her doing.
John's cooking philosophy is ingredient-first, relationship-driven. The kitchen works directly with farmers, fishermen, and purveyors across the country, mostly concentrated in the Midwest, and the menu reflects what those producers have at any given moment. It changes every day. The version you eat is the only version of that day.
The Menu
Smyth offers two formats. The classic tasting menu runs $420 per person and covers the core progression of the evening. The upgraded Chef's Menu, offered at a prime seating time, adds additional courses for $550 per person. I went with the Chef's Menu.
The wine pairing runs $245 and covers a sequence of mostly natural, small-production wines matched course by course. Full notes on the pairing are in the Smyth wine pairing article.
The menu has no fixed structure in terms of what will appear, but it moves through snacks and welcome bites, seafood, fish, meat, and then into dessert. The evening ran north of twenty courses, including a multi-course dessert sequence. The pace was unhurried. The progression made sense even when individual dishes pushed into unexpected territory.
The Food
The meal opened with a welcome drink choice. I mentioned I hadn't had coffee all day, and without any fuss, they brought me a beautiful Ethiopian coffee before a single course arrived. The alternative was an amazake, a traditional Japanese fermented rice drink, served in a small ceramic vessel. Both were on the table before the meal formally began.
Kakai pumpkin tart filled with Dungeness crab arrived on a wooden spoon, piled high with shaved translucent vegetables that gave the whole thing a feathery crown. The crab sat beneath in the hollowed shell of a kakai pumpkin tart, the sweetness of the shell meeting the oceanic softness of the crab. Land and sea, and neither one overpowering the other.
Toasted corn and black truffle sandwich is something I would put on my last meal on earth. Two crisp corn wafers sandwiching what tasted like a concentrated berry jam, topped with a generous amount of shaved black truffle. The truffle is the obvious luxury here, but the toasted corn underneath is what makes the dish. Sweet, a little smoky, earthy on top. I still think about it.
Smoked eel donut came as a fried beignet-style sphere, filled with foie gras ganache and topped with a slice of smoked eel, served on a ceramic plate glazed in deep swirls of grey-green. The combination of foie gras richness inside fried dough, finished with the smoke and brine of eel, sounds extreme and lands clean.
Maine uni parfait was a cloud of frozen and vacuumed sea urchin custard, topped with a sea urchin slushie, with clams buried underneath. Freezing and vacuuming the uni changes its texture into something airy and almost crystalline while preserving the flavor entirely. The slushie on top extends the same ingredient in a different register. I had never had anything like it.
Maine lobster and uni came in a shallow marbled bowl, the lobster set against a broth of English walnut oil and Virginia peanut milk, with squash papaya and a touch of sesame oil. The peanut milk pulled the bowl toward something gentler than a traditional shellfish preparation, and the squash cut through both.
Caviar and pumpkin seed was a composition of kaluga caviar, kelp, black walnut cured egg yolk, fermented melon and tomato gelee, pumpkin sea butter, and pumpkin praline. Six components that read more chaotic on paper than they presented on the plate. The egg yolk sat at the center, deep orange, with the caviar piled directly on top. A dish that rewarded a slow spoon.
Honeynut squash and pineapplebrought Maine uni back, this time with poached honeynut squash, rhubarb butter, and a pineapple, habanada, calamansi sauce. The uni sat on top of the squash like it had always been there. The sauce was citrus-forward with a gentle heat, and I was very happy about the amount of uni that came through this meal.
Rainbow trout and sesame arrived as two rectangles of trout poached in barley koji butter, set in a pale pool of sesame sauce, with the chef coming tableside to finish the dish. The koji butter gives the fish a fermented, slightly sweet note that the sesame amplifies rather than competes with. It looked understated and tasted otherwise. For notes on what was poured here, the [wine pairing article] covers it.
Trout tartare and roe came in a small square wooden box, the tartare below and a bright mound of trout roe lifted out by tweezers. The roe was briny and clean against the richness of the tartare. I could have eaten ten of them.
Black walnut cured quail egg arrived alongside the quail stuffed with guinea ham and truffle farce, the egg appearing separately in a small vessel, its yolk cured to a deep amber. A pull-apart milk bread came at the same moment, glazed and glossy on its small ceramic stand. The quail was tender and packed with an earthy, fatty farce. A lot happening in one course, all of it coordinated.
Venison royale came as a tight composed stack of Texas venison, plum, and maitake mushroom. The maitake formed a wide cap on top, slick with sauce. The venison below it was dark and dense. Rich, rustic, earthy, savory — everything that course promised.
Venison bouillon and white trufflearrived as a full presentation: a whole Alba white truffle on a glass pedestal, a wooden truffle shaver alongside it, and a small white bowl holding a bouillon of venison, maitake and enoki mushroom, and yuzu zest. The truffle was shaved at the table. The broth was clear and deeply savory, and the truffle arrived in translucent slices on top. A moment in the meal as much as a course.
Rice pudding and foie gras was Dessert One. A quenelle of foie gras ganache set in a bubbling koshihikari rice porridge, the porridge frothing around the quenelle as it was placed. Taking one of the heaviest luxury ingredients and turning it into a dessert built around rice is the kind of decision that could go wrong easily. It did not go wrong.
The remaining desserts arrived across several presentations. Cadbury quail egg appeared nestled in a pot of living wheatgrass, a painted quail egg sitting on the surface. Yogurt mousse and quailcame as a composed disc dusted in deep burgundy. Preserved kombu tart, pumpkin pie, and bittersweet chocolate and maitake brought the evening back to the mushroom thread that had run through the savory courses. Satsuma mandarin and marigold arrived as a small glazed citrus set in crushed ice alongside a delicate glass with a marigold preparation.
The Service
I arrived fifteen minutes early, running on four hours of sleep, and mentioned offhandedly that I hadn't had coffee. They brought one. That set the register for the entire evening. A blanket appeared when it was clear I was cold. Neither gesture was performed. Both felt like a natural extension of how this kitchen thinks about the person sitting in front of them.
The service at Smyth is not the choreographed formality of a room trying to convey its own importance. It feels more like a kitchen that genuinely wants you to have a good time. The difference is real and you feel it immediately.
At the close of the meal, the kitchen team signed my menu and handed me a personal list of their recommendations for eating and drinking around Chicago. The whole team came out for a photo. For a three-star kitchen ranked first in North America, the posture was about as far from institutional as a restaurant can get.
Moments like this are why I love solo dining. At a restaurant of this caliber, it is intimate, personal, and never lonely.
The Prices
The classic tasting menu runs $420 per person, exclusive of beverage, tax, and gratuity. The upgraded Chef's Menu is $550 per person. The wine pairing is $245. Reservations require a deposit of $100 per person at booking.
For context, this puts Smyth at the high end of Chicago's fine dining market and roughly in line with comparable three-star experiences in New York. Given the course count, the sourcing, and what the kitchen is actually putting on the plate, the price holds.
Who's It For
This is for the person who wants to understand Chicago's three-star conversation looks like. It is for the diner who finds highly theatrical fine dining tiring and wants rigor without performance. It is for anyone who has wondered what American fine dining looks like when it sources seriously, cooks with genuine restraint, and builds a room that does not make you feel like you are being assessed.
It is also, unexpectedly, for solo diners. The kitchen culture at Smyth generates a kind of individual attention that a table of four might not notice but a person dining alone will feel in every small gesture.
This is not a casual evening. But it is, somehow, relaxed.
Notes
Address: 177 N. Ada St. #101, Chicago, IL 60607
Reservations: Via Tock at exploretock.com/smyth
Phone: +1 773 913 3773
Hours: Check exploretock.com/smyth for current service days and seatings
Format: Tasting menu. Classic menu $420 per person; Chef's Menu (upgraded, prime seating) $550 per person. Wine pairing $245. Prices exclusive of tax and gratuity. $100 deposit per person required at booking.
Accolades: Three Michelin Stars (awarded 2023, retained); No. 1, North America's 50 Best Restaurants 2026; Best Restaurant in Midwest USA 2026
Instagram: @smythchicago
About the Author
Kelly Gomez is a creative director who eats well, travels far, and lives with intention. She has sat at tables that required months of planning, flown routes that cross a dozen time zones, and found herself in rooms most people never find. She is precise about what she loves and honest about what falls short.
A WSET Level 2 Wine Certified writer and Advanced Open Water Diver, Kelly covers luxury travel, hotels, fine dining, wineries, diving destinations, and the trips built around them.
Her work reaches a US-based audience of travelers between 25 and 44, with a near-even gender split and a meaningful following.
