Illinois Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Illinois

Illinois has 127 steakhouses in this directory and 49 of them are in Chicago — the largest concentration in any American city on SteakMap, ahead of Dallas, Houston and Miami.

That is not a coincidence of size. Chicago did not simply grow into a steak town; it built the modern American beef industry, and the restaurants are what was left behind when the stockyards closed.

The SteakMap Ten: Illinois's best, ranked

1. Chicago Cut Steakhouse — Chicago. Prime butchered and dry-aged on the premises, with the bone-in ribeye held 35 to 40 days and fired in 1,800-degree infrared broilers. Windows the length of the room over the Chicago River. Recognized in the Michelin Guide, and the most complete beef operation in the state.
2. Gene & Georgetti — Chicago. The city's oldest steakhouse, open since 1941, founded by Gene Michelotti and Alfredo “Georgetti” Federighi — Federighi in the kitchen, Michelotti on the floor — and still run by the Michelotti family. America's oldest Tuscan steakhouse, in River North, with the walls carrying signed photographs of the people who ate here. Sinatra among them.
3. Swift & Sons — Chicago. Named for Gustavus Swift, the packer who helped invent the disassembly line a few miles south of where this dining room sits. Boka Group's flagship steakhouse in the Fulton Market district — which is itself the old meatpacking quarter.
4. Bavette's Bar & Boeuf — Chicago. Dark, low and deliberately old-fashioned, and the room most Chicagoans name first when asked.
5. Maple & Ash — Chicago. Wood-fired, loud, expensive and very good — the Gold Coast's answer to the River North chophouses.
6. Prime & Provisions — Chicago. Sources whole animals and breaks them down in house, which is the older Chicago way of doing things.
7. Boeufhaus — Chicago. A small Ukrainian Village room that doubles as a butcher shop — the neighborhood-scale version of the whole idea.
8. El Che Steakhouse & Bar — Chicago. Argentine live-fire cooking over an open hearth. The most interesting non-chophouse steak in the city.
9. Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse — Chicago, plus Oak Brook and Rosemont. The Rush Street institution, and the closest thing Chicago has to a power-dinner constant.
10. RPM Steak — Chicago. The polished modern end of the River North scene.

Chicago invented the assembly line — in a slaughterhouse

The Union Stock Yards opened on Christmas Day, 1865 and did not close until 30 July 1971. In 106 years they handled more than one billion animals.

The scale is difficult to hold in your head. Two million animals a year by 1870. Nine million by 1890. Nearly a square mile of pens — roughly 2,300 of them — employing about 40,000 people by the early 1920s. At the 1924 peak, more meat was processed in Chicago than anywhere else on earth. Carl Sandburg called the city “Hog Butcher for the World,” and he was being literal.

What came out of those yards changed manufacturing everywhere. Packers including Armour and Swift developed the disassembly line: instead of one butcher working an animal start to finish, the carcass moved past a line of workers who each made a single cut. A steer that took a skilled butcher around twelve hours took thirty-four minutes.

Henry Ford saw it. He built his moving assembly line for the Model T in 1913, and credited the meatpacking disassembly lines with the idea. The defining industrial technique of the twentieth century was worked out on the South Side of Chicago, on cattle.

The yards are gone. The restaurants are the inheritance — which is why a city of Chicago's size supports 49 steakhouses, why one of the best is named Swift & Sons, and why the best of them still butcher in house.

How deep Illinois ages its beef

• 35 to 40 days — Chicago Cut, on the bone-in ribeye, butchered and aged on the premises.

Several more age in house without publishing a day count, including Prime & Provisions and Boeufhaus. For context, the deepest program anywhere in this directory is Texas, where one Plano kitchen runs to 240 days.

Browse every dry-aged steakhouse in Illinois → · Browse wagyu in Illinois →

Chicago and the suburbs

Chicago holds 49 of the state's 127 listings, clustered hardest in River North, the Gold Coast and Fulton Market. Beyond the city the count thins quickly: Oak Brook has 5, Schaumburg and Rosemont 4 apiece.

Illinois is, more than almost any state in this directory, a one-city steak story — and that city has a better claim to American beef than anywhere else in the country.