Top 5 Italian Restaurants in Chicago, according to the Italians —

As Italians living in Chicago, one of the questions that we get most frequently asked is “what is a good Italian restaurant in Chicago?” or “where can I have good (and REAL!) Italian food?”

The most frequent answer we tend to give is “My home”, because it’s true!

But we also understand that we cannot host people in our houses everyday and so the quest for a good Italian restaurant continues.

Some of the so-called Italian restaurants are not really Italian (cough cough… Olive Garden… cough cough), some of them are just overpriced (paying a premium price is okay, ingredients’ quality matters, but that premium price shouldn’t be equal to your paycheck), and some other are not up to par with Italian quality and simplicity.

We decided to ask a group of Italians born and raised eating pasta almost every day a very simple question: “What are your favorite five restaurants in Chicago?” 

Italians tends to make a huge difference between restaurants and pizzeria (which usually serve mostly pizza), therefore we decided to include only restaurants in the list (but here you can discover where Italians eat Pizza in Chicago).

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We are not affiliated or paid to promote any of the restaurants mentioned below, the purpose of the article is to educate you with an authentic opinion of Italian food by authentic Italians.

Here are the winners. Buon appetito!