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IL · Fancy restaurants
The birthday restaurant is the one people cite for years. That is the bar. Not the balloon. Not the complimentary dessert. The meal. Harry ranks the ones that earn what they cost.
Chicago has no anxiety about being fancy. The West Loop tasting-menu circuit is genuinely competitive with anywhere in the country — Randolph Street alone has changed what Americans expect from a restaurant meal. Alinea is the obvious reference. What surrounds it is equally serious.
| Critic signal | At the fancy end, professional review signal matters more than aggregate stars. A Michelin star or a consistent Eater/NYT review trail is factored into the Harry Score. Harry doesn't dismiss critics. |
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| Not a tourist trap | Expensive tourist traps are more expensive than cheap tourist traps. Harry cross-references tourist vs local scores at the fancy end to filter rooms that charge serious money for tourist-grade cooking. |
| Harry Score | The composite from Google, Yelp, Tripadvisor, and critic reviews. At the fancy end, Harry filters for places where the composite is high across all sources — not just tourist-facing ones. |
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