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Au Cheval
Au Cheval opened in Chicago's West Loop in 2012 and has spent over a decade as the reigning name in a city with no shortage of burger competition — of every hyped burger in Chicago, it likely has the longest continuous run of rave reviews, and it's regularly cited among the best cheeseburgers in America, not just the city. That's a genuinely rare thing to sustain for more than ten years in a food scene that turns over trends constantly. The restaurant itself is built as a diner-style bar with a real passion for eggs — the broader menu runs to chopped chicken liver, roasted bone marrow, and egg-focused entrées — but the double cheeseburger is what the wait is actually for. It's a thick, griddled patty built with real diner technique rather than smash-style speed, finished simply enough that the beef and cheese do the talking. That wait is a genuine part of the experience and not a small one: Au Cheval doesn't take reservations, seating is limited, and dinner waits upwards of two hours aren't unusual — a level of commitment most burger spots can't ask of customers and get away with. That it still pulls the crowd anyway, more than a decade after opening, is the clearest evidence of how the burger holds up against the hype. Part of what separates Au Cheval from a typical bar-and-grill burger is restraint dressed up as excess — the patty itself is thick and griddled with real technique, but the build stays close to a classic diner cheeseburger rather than piling on novelty toppings the way some "best burger in America" contenders do. The dry-aged, egg-forward menu around it signals a kitchen that could easily overcomplicate the burger and deliberately chose not to, letting the beef, cheese, and griddle char do all the work instead. That discipline is a big part of why it's held its reputation for over a decade in a city that churns through burger trends constantly. Au Cheval was Brendan Sodikoff's second restaurant after Gilt Bar, the craft-cocktail bar he opened in 2010 following a stint as a creative-development officer under Lettuce Entertain You's Richard Melman — training that shaped his approach to building out what's since grown into Hogsalt Hospitality, a group now running dozens of Chicago restaurants and bars. The space itself was remodeled from a former Greektown Gyros storefront to look like a diner that had already been there for decades, hand-painted signage included. Bon Appétit went further than most, naming the Au Cheval burger the single best burger in America outright, cementing a reputation Sodikoff then leveraged into Small Cheval, a faster-casual spinoff built around the same burger for people unwilling to brave the original's wait. For a Chicago cheeseburger list, Au Cheval is the essential "this is the one everyone talks about" entry — a diner-elevated, thick-patty burger from a kitchen that built its reputation on eggs and offal just as much as beef, in a West Loop room that still can't clear its own waitlist a decade in.
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Patty Please
Patty Please launched in May 2024 as a burger pop-up operating out of Small Bar, an established Avondale neighborhood bar run by Footman Hospitality — not a standalone restaurant, but a tight, focused smashburger program working out of someone else's small kitchen. Chef Khaled Simon, who also created the well-regarded Taco Sublime, built the concept around a deliberately narrow menu: real smashburger technique, applied seriously, in a late-night bar setting that doesn't usually get food this dialed in. The house order is "The Pleaser": two smashed patties, American cheese, sliced onion, pickles, and Pleaser sauce, notably served without fries included — a detail that signals this is a burger-first menu, not a full diner spread. The smash technique itself is the draw: two thin patties pressed hard onto the griddle for maximum crisp-edge contact, the same method driving the broader national smashburger wave, executed inside a neighborhood bar's kitchen rather than a dedicated burger restaurant's. Being a bar pop-up rather than its own restaurant shapes the whole experience — it's a late-night, casual, drink-in-hand kind of order, not a sit-down meal, and part of its fast-growing local reputation (enough to draw food-review attention within its first year) comes from that exact "hidden gem inside a bar" quality that makes it feel like a discovery rather than a destination. Chef Simon's earlier work on Taco Sublime matters here too — it signals a chef with real technique moving between concepts rather than a bar owner trying to add a food program as an afterthought, and that seriousness shows up in the smash technique itself: getting a genuinely crisp, lacy edge on a patty pressed inside a small bar kitchen, night after night, at volume, is harder to execute consistently than it looks. That Patty Please has kept its quality up since a 2024 launch, entirely on word of mouth from inside someone else's bar, is a real signal it's not just a novelty pop-up. Patty Please operates inside Small Bar, a longtime Avondale neighborhood bar run by Footman Hospitality, rather than as its own leased storefront — a pop-up-within-a-bar model that's become more common in Chicago as chefs look for lower-overhead ways to launch new concepts. The Pleaser itself runs $8 single, $12 double, priced to function as a genuine bar order rather than a destination-dining check, and it's served alongside sides like garlicky cheese curds and a citrusy frozen daiquiri that keep the whole menu feeling built for drinking, not just eating. Chicago Magazine named Patty Please its "Reboot of the Year" in February 2025, only about eight months after the pop-up's May 2024 launch — a fast turnaround for that kind of recognition, especially for a burger operating out of someone else's kitchen rather than its own standalone restaurant. For a Chicago cheeseburger list, Patty Please is the essential "new but already excellent" entry — genuine smashburger technique inside a small Avondale bar's kitchen, proof that Chicago's burger scene is still actively producing new contenders rather than resting on decades-old institutions.
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