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Taqueria Chingón
Taqueria Chingón built its reputation on a chef-driven, creative approach to tacos that pushes well past the traditional format — duck carnitas finished with date purée and a sunchoke-habanero salsa is the restaurant's signature move, the kind of combination that signals a kitchen treating tacos as a serious culinary format rather than a casual, fast order. The restaurant's original Bucktown location closed in November 2024 due to rising operational costs, a genuine setback for a well-regarded spot — but rather than closing for good, it reopened in May 2025 at a new Fulton Market address with a larger kitchen, indoor seating, and a patio, an upgrade in physical space that's let the kitchen expand on what it can put out. That relocation is worth knowing if you're used to the old Bucktown address. The Fulton Market neighborhood itself has become one of Chicago's most concentrated dining destinations over the past decade, filled with ambitious, chef-driven restaurants — Taqueria Chingón's move there places it directly alongside some of the city's most talked-about kitchens, a meaningfully different context than its original, more low-key Bucktown storefront. The restaurant's willingness to relocate rather than close after the original location's costs became unsustainable says something about the underlying strength of the concept — a lesser-regarded restaurant facing the same rent pressures in 2024 likely would have shut down entirely rather than reinvest in a bigger, pricier Fulton Market buildout. Taqueria Chingón's Michelin recognition and steady press coverage through that transition suggest the reopening was a genuine vote of confidence in the concept, not just a scaled-back retreat. Taqueria Chingón was founded in December 2020 by chefs Marcos Ascencio and Oliver Poilevey, opening in Bucktown in the middle of the pandemic — a genuinely risky moment to launch a new chef-driven restaurant. Poilevey brought real Chicago restaurant lineage to the project: his father ran the French bistro La Sardine for 22 years, giving Oliver a childhood spent around a working kitchen before he applied that same seriousness to Mexican street food instead. The gamble paid off quickly — Eater named it one of Chicago's best new restaurants in 2021, and Chicago Magazine gave it a Best New Restaurant nod in 2022, recognition that had already built real momentum before the original Bucktown space became financially unsustainable in 2024 and the concept relocated to its current, larger Fulton Market home. For a Chicago taco list, Taqueria Chingón is the essential "tacos as fine dining technique" entry — duck carnitas with date purée in a newly expanded Fulton Market kitchen, proof that Chicago's most ambitious chefs are willing to bring serious technique to a format usually associated with speed and simplicity.
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Antique Taco
Antique Taco started with what its founders, Rick and Ashley Ortiz, describe as a slightly odd idea: combine two things they loved — tacos and antiques — into a single restaurant. More than a decade later, the family-owned business is still built around that same premise, now with locations in both Wicker Park and Bridgeport, and remains a minority- and women-owned Chicago restaurant. The space itself is as much a part of the draw as the food: an eclectic, all-wood-finished dining room genuinely furnished with antique pieces and vintage design, giving the restaurant a lived-in, collected-over-time feel rather than the deliberately minimalist look most modern taco spots go for. It's one of the more visually distinct taquerias in the city specifically because the "antique" half of the name isn't just branding — the furniture is real. On the food side, Antique Taco leans into large, filling tacos built on thick, flour-style tortillas with creative, sometimes unexpected flavor combinations rather than sticking to strictly traditional fillings — a farmer's-market-adjacent, ingredient-forward approach that's earned it a reputation as one of Wicker Park's most reliably interesting taco kitchens rather than the most traditionally authentic one. Having sustained that concept for well over a decade, expanding to a second Bridgeport location along the way, is itself notable in a city where novelty-driven restaurant concepts often burn out within a few years. The Ortiz family's continued day-to-day involvement has kept both locations feeling like a genuine family business rather than a scaled-up brand, even as Antique Taco has become one of the more recognizable names on Chicago's broader taco scene. The Wicker Park original operated on its own for roughly four years before Rick and Ashley Ortiz opened the Bridgeport location in 2016 — a homecoming of sorts for Rick, who grew up in that neighborhood, at a former gas-station-turned-Mr.-Submarine site on 35th Street. The Bridgeport menu leans further into Rick's own family recipes and neighborhood-specific touches, including an al pastor spit and a "Super Crunchy" taco alongside carryover favorites like chili cheese curds. Antique Taco has picked up national attention along the way, with outlets naming it among America's best taco spots and its margarita program singled out for awards of its own — recognition for a restaurant that started, by the founders' own account, from the fairly odd premise of just wanting to combine two things they personally loved. For a Chicago taco list, Antique Taco is the essential "creative, ingredient-driven" entry — a family-run, antique-furnished Wicker Park taqueria built around inventive fillings and thick flour tortillas, proof that Chicago's taco scene has real room for kitchens that treat the format as a canvas rather than a fixed tradition.
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