Cariño

Where the El Runs and the Cooking Gets Serious

Cariño is a one-star Mexican tasting-menu restaurant in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, at 4662 N Broadway. The neighbourhood along North Broadway sits north of the city's restaurant core, and the Red Line overhead marks its rhythm as much as any street grid does. That context matters for understanding Cariño, which opened in December 2023 at 4662 N Broadway and earned a Michelin star within its first year of service. The room is small, the team is compact, and the format is a fixed tasting menu. What the kitchen produces across roughly 12 courses is a case study in how Mexican culinary tradition holds up as the structural spine of progressive tasting-menu cooking, not as an accent, not as a theme, but as the actual technical and cultural foundation of every plate.

The tasting-menu format has spread widely across Chicago's top tier. Topolobampo has long held the argument that Mexican cuisine belongs in formal dining rooms, and newer Michelin-recognised rooms like Kasama and Esmé have reinforced that the city supports serious fixed-format cooking across a range of culinary traditions. Cariño enters that conversation from a specific angle: it treats Mexican ingredients and techniques, nixtamalization, al pastor spicing, huitlacoche, clamato, as the raw material for the same kind of process-driven cooking associated with European fine dining, without distancing itself from the elemental appeal of the source tradition.

Fire, Smoke, and the Logic of Al Pastor

The editorial angle on Cariño is not fire in the literal barbacoa sense, there is no open pit in a room this size. The logic of al pastor, however, runs through the menu as a way of thinking about seasoning, acidity, fat, and heat in combination. A lamb tartare tostada seasoned in the al pastor style is the clearest example in the database: the application of a marinade tradition rooted in spit-roasted pork (itself a Mexican adaptation of shawarma brought by Lebanese immigrants to central Mexico in the early 20th century) to raw lamb signals that the kitchen is interested in what these techniques actually do, not merely what they reference. That kind of translation is the same intellectual move that kitchens like Pujol in Mexico City have made canonical in the context of contemporary Mexican fine dining, and it places Cariño in a specific critical conversation about how Mexican culinary grammar operates when applied with technical precision.

Chicken liver taco dorado and the pumpernickel quesadilla with black garlic follow the same logic: familiar formats with components that introduce textural or flavour variables not typically associated with their traditional versions, while the structural identity of the dish, the taco, the quesadilla, remains recognisable. This is different from the fusion approach that dominated an earlier era, where the point was contrast or surprise. Here, the point is that the traditional form is load-bearing, capable of supporting additional complexity without collapsing into something unrecognisable.

The Counter and the Courses

Leading seats in the room are at the counter. This is not a subjective preference, the counter format gives direct sightlines to a small team working through the tasting menu in real time, and the kitchen engages with guests during service. In Chicago's fine-dining tier, this dynamic is most closely associated with rooms like Lazy Bear in San Francisco or, in a more theatrical key, Alinea, where the kitchen's visibility is part of the intended experience. At Cariño, the scale keeps it less theatrical and more conversational, which suits the format.

Menu opens with chips and salsa rendered as salsa verde jelly and tortilla crumble, a formal acknowledgement that the kitchen knows exactly what it is doing with the reference, and a calibration of expectations for what follows. By the time the huitlacoche ravioli arrives, filled with the earthy corn fungus and finished with sweet-corn foam and fried corn silk, the kitchen has established that its technical register includes spherification and precise emulsification alongside nixtamalization, the ancient alkaline process that transforms dried corn into masa and concentrates its nutritional and flavour profile. The queso truffle quesadilla and a michelada reimagined as an oyster with clamato pearls and beer foam continue the pattern: familiar signal, precise reconstruction.

Michelin inspectors awarded Cariño a star in 2024. For a room that opened in December 2023, the speed of that recognition places it alongside similarly rapid ascents in the city's recent Michelin history. The 4.8 Google rating across 130 reviews reinforces early guest reception.

For comparison with the broader fine-dining tier, Cariño's comparable set in Chicago's Michelin-starred bracket includes Boka, Kasama, and Esmé at the one-star level, alongside three-star rooms like Alinea and Smyth. Nationally, the format and price point ($$$$ tasting menu, counter seating) places it in a cohort that includes Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, The French Laundry in Napa, Le Bernardin in New York City, Providence in Los Angeles, and Emeril's in New Orleans. Within the Mexican fine-dining category specifically, the closest US comparison by approach is Alma Fonda Fina in Denver.

Uptown in Context

Uptown frames the experience, with Broadway between Lawrence and Foster mixing long-standing businesses and newer openings. The Red Line stop at Lawrence puts the restaurant within reach of central Chicago without requiring a taxi, and the approach on foot past the overhead train structure is part of the arrival. This is not River North or the West Loop, where the density of high-profile restaurants creates a self-reinforcing scene. Cariño operates as a destination rather than a neighbourhood-circuit stop, which means bookings require planning rather than spontaneous walk-in attempts.

For those building a broader Chicago eating itinerary around Mexican and Latin cuisines at different price points, the city's taco and regional Mexican options are strong. Big Star in Wicker Park operates at the opposite end of the formality spectrum, and Birrieria Zaragoza on the Southwest Side represents a different kind of specialisation. Chilam Balam and Dove's Luncheonette occupy the middle register. Each addresses a different aspect of what Mexican cooking means in a city with a substantial Mexican-American population and decades of culinary infrastructure to draw from.

Planning Your Visit

Cariño is a $$$$ tasting-menu restaurant that earned its Michelin star in 2024. The format is fixed-course, running roughly 12 courses, with counter seating offering the clearest view of the kitchen. The restaurant opened in December 2023. Reservations are essential. The address is 4662 N Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640.