Nettare
Nettare earns the twenty-seventh rank for committing with full conviction to a vision — Midwest terroir as the organizing principle of an Italian-inflected restaurant — and making it work.
At 1953 W. Chicago Avenue, Nettare operates from morning coffee and house-made pastries through late-night cocktails and dinner, a forty-five-seat room that manages to feel like a neighborhood institution despite being relatively new. The food is Mediterranean and Italian in its architecture — antipasti, pastas, grilled dishes — but every ingredient and almost every bottle in the bar traces back to the Great Lakes region. The sourcing is not an aesthetic; it is a genuine constraint that shapes everything the kitchen does.
The result is a restaurant with a coherent point of view, which is rarer than it should be at this price point. The all-day format attracts a regulars crowd that returns for the specialty coffee at noon and the natural wine at ten. Nettare proves that drinking locally in Chicago does not mean drinking badly.
- House-made pasta with Midwestern grain
- Great Lakes wine and spirits pairing
- Seasonal antipasti spread
