A three-Michelin-star restaurant tucked into a converted West Loop rowhouse just topped the most-watched ranking in American fine dining. Smyth, run by chefs John Shields and Karen Urie Shields, was named the Best Restaurant in North America for 2026 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants — the first Chicago restaurant ever to hold that title.
From a Rowhouse Basement to #1
Smyth opened in 2016 inside a 19th-century rowhouse at 177 N. Ada St., with its casual downstairs sibling, The Loyalist, sharing the same kitchen. A decade later it holds three Michelin stars — the only Chicago restaurant with that rating — and spent the past two years climbing the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list before taking the North America title outright in 2026. The win lands as the restaurant marks its tenth anniversary, a milestone Chicago’s restaurant press has noted arrives even as the city’s broader dining scene has struggled with closures.
What $420 Actually Buys
Smyth is tasting-menu only, with a Chef’s Menu currently priced around $420–425 per person before beverages, tax, and gratuity. Reservations run exclusively through the Tock platform and tend to release in blocks — this isn’t a walk-in restaurant. The cooking leans heavily on a single Wisconsin farm the Shields have worked with for years, meaning the exact dishes shift week to week with whatever that farm is sending: a given night might swing from a root-vegetable course built around something pulled that morning to a dessert built around Karen Urie Shields’ pastry work, which has its own standalone reputation in Chicago dining circles.
The Bigger Picture
Smyth’s win is part of a wider 2026 shakeup at the top of the restaurant world. The World’s 50 Best global ceremony lands November 4 in Lima, Peru, with 2025’s top restaurant, Maido, graduating into the list’s permanent “Best of the Best” hall of fame rather than defending its title — opening the door for a new global No. 1 to be named alongside Smyth’s regional win. For now, Smyth’s title is specific to North America, but it puts Chicago, rather than New York or Mexico City, at the center of the continent’s fine-dining conversation for the first time. If a visit is on the horizon, the move is to book a Tock slot the moment a release window opens — tables for a restaurant this newly crowned tend to disappear fast.
