I spent most of my career as a restaurant critic for daily newspapers — first the Denver Post then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution — writing a weekly review. That meant dining out about four to six times a week, which was a fun sport when I was young. During the boom times of the early 2000s, when soulless glass towers were sprouting all over Atlanta, I had to review a lot of big, glossy “concepts” in lobbies with 28-foot-high windows. When the economy was bad there were fewer openings, so I often checked in on older places or explored the suburbs where immigrant populations taught me about Eritrean breakfast eggs, 12-ingredient Brazilian sandwiches, Colombian pastries, Korean stews, and how to special order a roasted guinea pig for a Peruvian feast. This constant dining gave me a singular perspective on how the city’s dining habits were changing — when beet and goat cheese salad was done, but hamachi crudo was suddenly everywhere; when lining up for the best banh mi or Korean fried chicken became a passport stamp for the city’s food fanatics; or when New York pizzas baked in deck ovens lost their cachet to Neapolitan pies baked in dome ovens imported from Italy. At the end of the year I’d write a report on the year’s trend lines that was always popular with readers. 

This gig at Chicago magazine, where I write one review a month plus some roundups, doesn’t afford me quite the same depth of data points, but enough to notice some of the changes taking place in Chicago’s dining world. Here are five trends I’ve witnessed in 2024:  

Croissants for all

Not that long ago, laminated pastries (croissants, danish, kouign-amann, etc.) were available only in the city’s more robust, higher volume bakeries. Rolling out the dough and folding it again and again to trap butter between its layers required either serious manual labor or expensive equipment. Now smaller bakeries are able to bake daily small batches thanks to the advent of cheaper, smaller, and more reliable dough sheeters. This also means an explosion of creativity, particularly when it comes to savory pastries. The current menu at Mindy’s Bakery features salami, egg, pimento cheese, and cheddar danishes. 

The return of the half chicken

The half roasted chicken has not been a menu darling in a while. We went through flirtations with the airline breast (the kind with an attached wing) and the braised thigh entree (delicious, but do you really want to pay $26 for two thighs?). Now the half chicken, once the order for folks with “bigger appetites,” has reemerged as the preparation of choice, though I feel like most diners are now sharing them. The version at Oliver’s with dill and crème fraîche is redonkulously good, and there’s a similar contender at Bar Parisette. Though I think the most bodacious half chicken around is the parm version at Void. 

The year of pasta

Speaking of Void, has anyone tried their hilarious Spaghetti Uh-O’s served in a can to evoke the childhood classic? (It’s on our list of The 25 Best Things to Eat Right Now.) Now that the cost of raw ingredients, particularly animal proteins, has become a major headache for restaurants trying to keep prices in line, pasta has emerged as a new top-line specialty. From Tre Dita to Mano a Mano, many new restaurants are all about their pasta programs. Specialty Asian restaurants are also featuring hand-crafted noodles like never before, as I noted a couple of months ago. Technology also has a hand here, as pasta extruders have come down in price, allowing restaurants to improve their dried pasta programs. I’ve noticed a lot of lumache (snail-shaped shells) on restaurant menus. 

Tavern pies go chic

Gone are the days when any serious discussion of Chicago’s actual favorite pizza style started and ended with “Pat’s or Vito & Nick’s?” New spots such as Dicey’s and Novel Pizza Cafe (which makes a craveworthy version with longanisa and giardiniera) have brought this style to the forefront of pizza discourse here and in other cities, where it’s catching on. This article in the New York Times certainly did a lot to spread the thin-crust gospel.

The fine dining bubble

Major congrats to Norman Fenton, whose restaurant Cariño earned a Michelin star this week in its first year. That’s huge. Congrats are due as well to Mike Santinover whose ramen-ya Akahoshi was named to Bon Appétit’s list of the best new restaurants of the year. Also huge. Yet the difference between the two accolades has something telling to say about dining in Chicago (and other major cities) today. Through one lens, excellence in dining means a very expensive tasting menu with beautiful dishware, refined service, and the best ingredients on the world market. Through another, it means exploring regional foodways to add to the development of American cuisine as a reflection of all the cultures that enrich it. The cynic in me thinks that the ultrawealthy have managed to extract so much capital from the economy that this fine-dining bubble reflects a separate mindset (if not a reality). Yet if you look at end of year lists from national publications like Bon Appétit or Food & Wine, you’ll see that many food writers (raises hand) prefer the latter because these are the restaurants we can return to time and again and develop a relationship with. Or put it this way: I love sushi more than any other food on earth, yet there are too damn many $200 omakase restaurants now for me to visit each one. That wouldn’t be a good use of resources or a benefit to our readership. This divergence is happening everywhere. The San Francisco Chronicle recently decried the advent of tweezer food restaurants displacing the inventive bistros and trattorias on which the city earned its stripes as a dining mecca. 

So that’s my year in review. If y’all have anything to add to the list, I’m all ears. Well, 80% mouth but also ears…