Best Korean Food in Chicago, Ranked

Korean settlement in Chicago was tiny before 1965 — through the early '60s, maybe 500 people total, mostly Hawaii sugar-plantation workers, Korean War brides, and students. The 1965 immigration reform act changed that fast: by 1972, Chicago's Korean population had grown to roughly 10,000. The community first settled in Lakeview, then began migrating to Albany Park in the late 1970s, drawn by cheap storefronts along Lawrence Avenue and city incentives for new business development.

By 1991, Albany Park was the real hub of the city's largest Korean community — something like 35,000 residents and 428 Korean-owned businesses, restaurants and grocery stores and bakeries and travel agencies, packed along Lawrence between Kedzie and Pulaski. In 1993 the city made it official: that exact stretch was legally designated 'Seoul Drive,' a real street name, not a neighborhood nickname.

Then the dispersal, which had actually already started before the sign went up: by 1992, more than 22,000 Koreans had left Albany Park for the northwest suburbs, chasing better schools for their kids. By the 2000s, per UIC historian Michael Jin, Albany Park was Koreatown — in his words — 'really only... by name.' Only a handful of the original 400-plus businesses are still there today.

Today's real Korean Chicago is suburban — Niles, Glenview, Northbrook, Morton Grove — which is exactly why this list leans that direction: Golden Durebak out in Buffalo Grove, Ttowa Korean Bistro in Arlington Heights, New Village Gastropub & Karaoke in Northbrook. The food didn't vanish when Seoul Drive emptied out. It just moved to where the community actually lives now — the same outward migration this project keeps finding, cuisine after cuisine, across this city.

Sitting at #1 on the list above is Bonyeon, a Korean beef omakase spot serious enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the city's best fine dining, period — real proof the cuisine's reputation here has only gotten more ambitious as its geography kept shifting. That's the real throughline every cuisine on this page shares: the neighborhood moves, the food gets better anyway. It's the kind of layered story we mean every time we slap I ❤ Chi on something.