There aren't many restaurants where we'd wait in line for hours—now that Hot Doug's is gone, Angry Crab is the only one. Bring some wine or beer for the line, because this seafood—clams, crabs, lobsters and shrimp sold by the pound and tossed with lemon pepper, garlic butter, Cajun spice or all three mixed together—is worth the wait. The luxurious garlic butter and spunky Cajun spice are the best, and they're worth the mess you'll make eating them.
If dining in Chicago in 2015 can be summed up with one cuisine, it's steak. But the new restaurants this year challenged our idea of what a steakhouse is, and four of them made our year-end best list. Beef wasn't the only thing we ate and loved this year, though—we fell hard for an elegant French restaurant and two new Italian spots. And not every great new restaurant even required a fork and knife—we devoured lobster rolls from a food truck, ate some tasty new bar food and got messy (and had fun!) digging into spicy seafood and tacos in bags. Here are our picks for the 15 best new restaurants of 2015.
RECOMMENDED: The best of 2015
