Next Restaurant

Dinner as a Fixed-Run Production

Fulton Market has spent the better part of a decade converting meatpacking infrastructure into one of the country's more concentrated strips of serious dining. The address at 953 W Fulton Market sits squarely in that corridor, a neighbourhood where $$$$ tasting menus are the default register and where restaurants are measured against a demanding local peer set that includes Alinea, Smyth, and Ever. Within that context, Next occupies a particular niche: a fine dining room built around a theatrical, rotating concept rather than a fixed culinary identity.

The format is closer to a repertory theatre than a conventional restaurant. Each menu runs for roughly four months before the kitchen tears it down and rebuilds around a new theme. Past editions have moved through ancient Rome, Latin America, and contemporary Chinese cuisine. A recent run drew from Auguste Escoffier's classical French kitchen, with dishes referencing the 1906 Paris canon: lamb with sauce choron, sweetbreads, and a bombe Ceylan finished with griottine cherries and sauce anglaise. The theme extended across every course, from the first pass through savoury to the final dessert composition.

This approach positions Next in a small category of American restaurants where the menu is as much a curatorial statement as a culinary one. The commitment to full thematic execution, rather than a loosely themed selection of dishes, is where the format either holds or collapses. At Next, the critical record suggests it holds.

Where the Awards Conversation Sits

The recognition pattern around Next traces a consistent trajectory. The restaurant holds a Michelin star as of 2024, placing it in the upper tier of Chicago's recognised fine dining rooms alongside Oriole and Kasama, among others. Opinionated About Dining, which aggregates rankings from a large panel of professional diners and critics, has listed Next among its leading restaurants in North America for three consecutive years: 98th in 2023, 81st in 2024, and 76th in 2025. That upward movement across three cycles is a more useful signal than any single year's placement.

The restaurant also holds a Pearl recommendation for 2025, adding another independent data point to a recognition profile that is notably consistent across different evaluation systems. Michelin and OAD use different methodologies, which makes agreement between them a stronger indicator than either alone.

Broader institutional context matters here. Next was founded by Grant Achatz, who received the James Beard Foundation's award for leading cook in the United States and was named among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people. That credential set does not make Next a better or worse restaurant to visit on a given evening, but it does signal the ambition level at which the project was conceived, and the peer set against which it expects to be assessed. Nationally, that peer set includes rooms like The French Laundry in Napa, Le Bernardin in New York City, and Lazy Bear in San Francisco — restaurants where the format itself is a considered position, not a default.

The Rotating Format and What It Demands of a Diner

Thematic rotation at Next creates a different set of expectations than a restaurant with a fixed menu. A diner who visits during an Escoffier-era French edition is having a categorically different meal than one who visits during an ancient Rome or Latin America run. The kitchen's technical range has to be genuinely broad, not merely flexible. Executing cacio e pepe and guanciale-wrapped branzino in an Italia menu, then pivoting to 19th-century French classical technique in the following edition, requires a level of research and preparation that goes beyond seasonal menu adjustments.

For the diner, this means the decision to book is partly a decision about which menu is currently running. Checking what theme is in rotation before committing to a reservation is more important here than at most restaurants. The four-month cycles also mean that word-of-mouth about a specific menu has a limited shelf life, and a review of one edition is only partially transferable to the next.

This volatility is a feature rather than a flaw. It places Next closer to a performance series, where the point is to catch a specific production, than to a classic restaurant, where the identity is stable and the visit is repeatable. Among American fine dining rooms operating at the $$$$ tier, very few sustain this model with the consistency that Next's awards record reflects. Comparable thematic ambition exists at places like Saga in New York and Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, though the execution model differs significantly at each.

Chef Masamitsu Hisano and the Kitchen's Position

The current kitchen is led by Chef Masamitsu Hisano. In a restaurant built around a rotating concept, the chef's role carries a specific weight: each edition requires not just technical execution but deep familiarity with a culinary tradition that may be distant from their own training. The awards trajectory during Hisano's tenure, reflected in the OAD climb from 98th to 76th between 2023 and 2025, suggests the kitchen has been meeting the format's demands at a level the critical community is registering. The Michelin star, awarded in 2024, aligns with that reading.

Chicago's fine dining scene has developed enough depth that holding a Michelin star in this city no longer automatically signals a particular style. The starred cohort now spans formats as different as Kasama's Filipino tasting menu and Next's rotating theatrical concept, which makes each award more meaningful as a signal about execution quality than about category. That Next has maintained its star while changing its menu entirely every four months is a detail worth sitting with.

Fulton Market in the Broader Dining Map

Understanding Next's position requires situating it in Fulton Market, which by the mid-2020s had become Chicago's most competitive dining block. The neighbourhood's transformation from industrial food processing to restaurant destination happened fast enough that the market is still sorting itself, with notable additions continuing to arrive alongside established rooms. The concentration of $$$$ tasting menus within a few blocks creates a comparison environment where diners are making explicit choices about where to direct significant spend.

Within that local context, Next occupies a position that the other major rooms cannot: no other restaurant in the immediate peer set runs a fully thematic, historically rooted format that resets four times a year. Smyth and Ever offer more fixed creative identities; Alinea operates in a modernist register that is distinct from Next's historical framing. The competitive set matters because it helps clarify what a diner is choosing when they book Next specifically.

For readers planning a broader Chicago visit, the city's dining map extends well beyond Fulton Market. Our full Chicago restaurants guide covers the range. If you are also planning accommodation or other aspects of a trip, see our Chicago hotels guide, bars guide, and experiences guide. For those with wider American itineraries, rooms like Providence in Los Angeles, Emeril's in New Orleans, and Bedford Post Inn in Bedford offer different points of reference for what American fine dining looks like at the $$$$ tier across different cities.

What Next Restaurant Is Famous For — A Reference Point

No single dish defines Next in the way a signature preparation defines a restaurant with a fixed menu. The format is the signature: a fully committed thematic menu that changes every four months and draws from a different culinary tradition each time. The Paris 1906 edition, drawing on Escoffier's classical technique, produced dishes including carrè d'agneau avec sauce choron and a bombe Ceylan dessert with rum, coffee, and a chocolate shell. An earlier Italia edition featured cacio e pepe and guanciale-wrapped branzino. The critical recognition the restaurant has received, including its Michelin star and consistent OAD placement, reflects the execution quality across these rotating formats rather than attachment to any single preparation. The awards trail and the founding credentials, rooted in the James Beard Foundation's recognition of Grant Achatz as the leading cook in the United States, provide the trust architecture. The specific menu running during your visit provides the experience. Both matter, and neither is permanent.