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Steakhouses in Chicago: Twenty Rooms Between the River and Rush Street

Chicago Steakhouses, Illinois

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300 North LaSalle Street, Chicago

Twenty rooms on this page, and every one of them inside the city limits. Half of them stand in River North, most within a few blocks of the Chicago River: Bavette's and RPM Steak both stand on West Kinzie Street, a block and a half apart, Gene & Georgetti holds the Franklin Street corner, Chicago Cut takes the water at 300 North LaSalle, and Mastro's, the Chicago Chop House, Kinzie Chophouse, Smith & Wollensky, Steak 48 and Fogo de Chão fill in around them. Six more sit on the Gold Coast and the Magnificent Mile, from Gibsons on Rush Street to the Capital Grille on North St. Clair. Four hold the Loop and the West Loop, with Swift & Sons out in Fulton Market where the meat trade used to be. Three Korean steakhouses qualify under the same rule and are published on the Chicago Korean barbecue guide, linked below.

  1. West Kinzie Street, River North. The dry-aged rib eye is the signature cut.

  2. North Franklin Street. The Italian half of the menu is not a garnish — chicken Vesuvio sits beside the prime aged steaks.

  3. 300 North LaSalle, on the river. Ask about the in-house butchery; the tablet wine list is searchable by winery location.

  4. 1028 North Rush Street. The Gold Coast room that gave Rush Street its steakhouse reputation.

  5. North Canal Street, West Loop. Three levels and a retractable roof; ask for the river side.

  6. 1000 West Fulton Market. The steakhouse the West Loop got once Fulton Market stopped being a meat district and started being a dining one.

  7. 66 West Kinzie Street, River North. A block and a half east of Bavette's on the same street.

  8. West Maple Street, Gold Coast. The fire-roasted seafood tower is the dish that tells you what the kitchen is doing.

  9. North Wabash Avenue. Sit where you can see the glass show kitchen; the patio is on the second floor.

  10. LaSalle at Wacker. The second-floor dining room is the one over the river.

  11. West Ontario Street. A brownstone with live music, and every steak hand-cut on site.

  12. 400 North Wells Street. Greek hospitality on an American chophouse menu, and the same beef supplier for three decades.

  13. East Walton Place. Small enough to feel like a neighborhood room a block off Michigan Avenue.

  14. 505 North Michigan Avenue. The Magnificent Mile address on this page, at the north end of the bridge.

  15. North State Street, on the river. Wollensky's Grill downstairs is the later, looser half of the same building.

  16. North Dearborn Street. Live music nightly, and the second floor is where the private rooms are.

  17. East Wacker Place, the Loop. This is the Chicago Morton's — the State Street original is gone.

  18. North St. Clair Street, Streeterville. The quiet end of the Magnificent Mile cluster.

  19. East Grand Avenue. Stone crab claws flown from Miami on the same table as the prime steak.

  20. North LaSalle Drive. The churrascaria on the page, with the market table anchored in front of the grill.

River North

Ten of the twenty rooms sit in one neighborhood, and most of them are walkable from each other.

Bavette's Bar & Boeuf is on West Kinzie Street, a Hogsalt room of exposed brick and low light where the dry-aged rib eye is the cut the kitchen is built around. RPM Steak is a block and a half east at 66 West Kinzie, bringing a chef-driven menu to a traditional steakhouse list. Gene & Georgetti is on North Franklin Street and has been since 1941, per the city's own visitor listing, still run by the Durpetti family and still putting prime aged steaks beside chicken Vesuvio.

Chicago Cut Steakhouse takes the river frontage at 300 North LaSalle, a window-lined room with a patio on the water; the Michelin Guide's listing records that the beef is butchered and dry-aged on the premises, and the wine list arrives on a tablet you can search by varietal. The Chicago Chop House is around the corner on West Ontario in a Victorian brownstone built in 1897, according to the restaurant's own description, hand-cutting USDA Prime. Kinzie Chophouse opened on North Wells Street in 1991, is independently woman-owned, and calls itself an American steakhouse with a Mediterranean heartbeat.

Mastro's is on North Dearborn with live music every night and three second-floor private rooms that combine. Smith & Wollensky occupies a two-story building on North State Street with the river below it, Wollensky's Grill downstairs, and tours of the dry-aging room and butcher shop on request. Steak 48 is on North Wabash behind a glass-walled show kitchen. Fogo de Chão is on North LaSalle Drive, where the churrasco grill feeds a dining room seating more than three hundred.

The Gold Coast and the Magnificent Mile

Six rooms north and east of the river, strung along Rush Street and Michigan Avenue.

Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse is the Rush Street anchor at 1028 North Rush, and the group holds its own USDA Prime certification, according to the city's visitor listing. Maple & Ash is a block west on West Maple Street, where everything runs through open fire — even the seafood tower is fire-roasted rather than iced. Rosebud Steakhouse is on East Walton Place just off Michigan Avenue, working a prime New York sirloin and a Chicago-cut bone-in ribeye.

Michael Jordan's Steak House is at 505 North Michigan Avenue with steakhouse classics on a seasonal menu. The Capital Grille is on North St. Clair Street in Streeterville, a dry-aged house with an award-winning wine list. Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab is on East Grand Avenue in the North Bridge blocks, carrying the Miami stone crab menu alongside the prime steaks.

The Loop and the West Loop

Four rooms, two on each side of the river's south branch.

Prime & Provisions holds the corner of North LaSalle and Wacker Drive across twelve thousand square feet, from the ground floor up to a second-floor dining room over the water, fitted out as a 1920s supper club and cutting its steaks by hand. Morton's The Steakhouse is a few blocks east on East Wacker Place, serving USDA prime-aged beef in a club-like room; the original Morton's at 1050 North State Street closed in November 2020 and this is the Chicago room that remains.

West of the river, Gibsons Italia opened on North Canal Street in October 2017 as the group's first downtown room in more than a decade — three levels, two fireplaces and a retractable roof over the river, with chef José Sosa running Italian dishes beside the beef. Swift & Sons is deeper into Fulton Market at 1000 West Fulton, built by the Boka Restaurant Group and B. Hospitality with chef Chris Pandel and designers AvroKO, in the district where the American meat trade did its business.

The three Korean steakhouses, published next door

Three Chicago rooms qualify under this collection's rule as Korean-style beef rooms, and all three already have place pages on the Chicago Korean barbecue guide.

Iron Age Korean Steakhouse in Wicker Park, Perilla Steakhouse on North Wabash Avenue and Shinhwa Korean Steakhouse on South Wentworth Avenue are beef rooms first, which is the same ground that puts COTE on the Manhattan page. A room is published once on this site, so this page names them and points at the guide that carries them. Iron Age's Glenview room is a north-suburbs address and is outside the scope of this page entirely.

Frequently asked questions

What makes a room a steakhouse on this page?
Steak has to be the menu's center of gravity, plus the beef-centric genres — churrascaria, Argentine parrilla, Japanese wagyu counter, Korean-style beef room. That rule keeps some well-liked Chicago rooms off the list. La Grande Boucherie on North Dearborn is an Art Nouveau Parisian brasserie with large-format meats on a French menu, which is a brasserie rather than a chophouse. Outback, LongHorn and Texas Roadhouse are casual national chains rather than destination rooms.
Why do national chains like Morton's and the Capital Grille count when Outback does not?
The line is between national fine-dining steakhouses and national casual chains. Capital Grille, Morton's, Smith & Wollensky, Mastro's, Fogo de Chão and Steak 48 are steakhouses under the rule and each outpost is its own room with its own street and its own kitchen. Outback, LongHorn and Texas Roadhouse are not destination rooms and none of them appears anywhere in this collection.
Which Morton's is the one on this page?
The room at 65 East Wacker Place in the Loop. The original Morton's at 1050 North State Street on the Gold Coast closed in November 2020, which Crain's Chicago Business and the local television stations all reported at the time, and the Wacker Place room stayed open. Same brand, different address, one room on this page.
Why is there no suburban section?
Because the count did not need one. Chicago's steakhouse mass never left River North, the Gold Coast, the Loop and the West Loop, so twenty rooms inside the city limits carry the page on their own and Gibsons Oak Brook and Gibsons Rosemont are not required. That is the opposite of what happened to Chicago's Korean barbecue, where the grills moved out to Niles and Glenview and needed a second page.
Why are Iron Age, Perilla and Shinhwa not listed as rooms here?
All three qualify as Korean-style beef rooms, and all three already have place pages on the Chicago Korean barbecue guide. A room is published once on this site, so this page names them in prose and links to the guide that carries them.
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