Best Sushi in Chicago, Ranked

Chicago's sushi culture doesn't trace back to one invented dish the way deep dish or the hot dog does — it traces back to the same real Japanese immigration story covered in this site's own Best Japanese Chicago history: the WWII-era resettlement to Clark & Division, and the Nikkeimachi that later grew up Clark Street through Lakeview. What's on this list today is mostly a newer generation building on that foundation.

The clearest example is Bonyeon, which tops this ranking. Chef Sangtae Park and his wife, Kate Kim-Park, already ran the well-regarded Omakase Yume nearby when their landlord offered them the space next door — they gutted a former office and opened Bonyeon as what's described as Chicago's first beef-focused omakase, a Korean approach to beef built on a Japanese tasting-menu format, at a 12-seat counter on Washington Boulevard.

A different, much less photographed Chicago sushi tradition shows up further down this list: the neighborhood fish market with a sushi counter built into the back of it. 312 Fish Market, Lawrence Fish Market, and Dempster Fish aren't trying to be a destination restaurant — they're a real seafood counter that also happens to cut a very good roll, the same honest, unglamorous model that's kept each of them running.

At the other end sits NoMI, seven floors up in the Park Hyatt on Michigan Avenue — Chicago sushi with a skyline view attached, a genuinely different kind of occasion from a fish-market lunch counter a few miles northwest.

What ties the list together is the same thing that ties most of this city's food together: no single format wins. Omakase counters, neighborhood fish markets, and hotel dining rooms all earned their spot here on their own terms.