Being the huge foodie that I am, I’m always on the hunt for those great restaurants and hole in the wall places.  The past few weeks, I’ve been to two new places that automatically made it into my top five favorite Chicago restaurants.  Although they might not be “hole in the wall” places as they are more popular (located right on or off of State Street), they were still fantastic finds.

The first place, Quartino, is an Italian restaurant on State Street about five blocks down from Loyola.  I’ve heard different things about the place, not so good things, so I was excited to try it out for myself.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that the place was very crowded, bustling and family friendly.  It looks very fancy from the inside, but inside, its pretty casual, checkered table cloths and all.  The high quality food was actually pretty cheap for an Italian place, too.  I got chicken alfredo for only ten dollars, and a few of my friends got lasagna and pasta for twelve.  It was definitely a good choice.

The second place I tried was Panang.  It’s a small Thai place off of State Street.  I wasn’t expecting a small place for take out only, but much to my surprise it was a nice sit down restaurant.  I ordered pad thai and my friend ordered sweet and sour chicken.  For an appetizer, we got crab rangoon, which was probably the best part of both of our meals; crab rangoon with sweet and sour sauce= extremely delectable.  The pad thai was good, too, but I’ll definitely be going back for the crab rangoon.

One of my favorite parts about living in Chicago is exploring all of its fine cuisine.  I’ve definitely found two winners, but I’m looking forward to exploring more restaurants in the future!