Where to Eat to Keep Your New Year's Resolutions
A new year means a new opportunity to uphold nutritious resolutions. Resolving to eat and drink healthier doesn’t have to mean Master Cleanses and iceberg lettuce, though, as Chicago is chock full of restaurants with delicious healthy alternatives, be it fresh juice cocktails that make imbibing that much more wholesome or luscious salads that go well beyond your standard mixed greens.
The Field Museum recently overhauled its in-house dining with a new eatery called The Field Bistro. Subtitled “global gourmet flavor,” the restaurant toils to source locally and responsibly, serving food that is hearty yet fresh and nourishing. Soups are exemplary, from pumpkin-ginger soup with caramelized pears to a woodland mushroom version with aged sherry and herb croutons. Salads are noteworthy as well, including a Chicago chop salad with iceberg, salami, tomatoes, onions, garbanzo beans, provolone, cucumbers, peas, bacon, and sweet mustard vinaigrette; and Kim’s pulled chicken ensalada with mixed greens, black beans, tomatoes, jicama, chiles, cilantro, roasted corn, fried tortillas, and poblano ranch dressing. The Field Bistro also offers healthier alternatives to heftier dishes, like a turkey burger made with lean ground turkey, Jack cheese, chipotle aïoli, and pico de gallo on a toasted sesame roll.
Naturally, a restaurant modeled after California would have healthier tendencies. Such is the case at Lettuce Entertain You’s new Summer House Santa Monica. The white-washed, beachy restaurant feels like an authentic Californian vacation, complete with pristine, vivifying cuisine that the Golden State is known for, from ahi tuna tostadas and hamachi tartare to fresh Burrata, slow-poached scallops, grilled Atlantic salmon, grilled vegetable tacos, and a smorgasbord of offbeat salads.
Another Lettuce Entertain You spot offering a neoteric take on healthier dining is Beatrix. Morning, noon, and night, the River North restaurant offers a mixed bag of internationally inspired dishes and drinks, ranging from over-the-top indulgent to blessedly nutritious. Fresh-squeezed juice drinks are a solid choice for breakfast and brunch, along with ten-grain oatmeal, quinoa cakes with poached eggs, and egg white omelettes studded with avocado-tomato salsa and turkey bacon. Lunch brings pumpkin-avocado carpaccio, tomato soup with white cheddar shortbread, and a stellar three-grain salad with freekeh, millet, and red quinoa. For dinner, a lighter alternative to all-out gluttony is the turkey, sweet potato, and greens “neatloaf,” a meatless meatloaf bedecked with braised kale and vegetable gravy. For drinks, fresh juice cocktails comprise a bulk of the beverage list, such as the Vodka Dew made with vodka, local melons, and lime, and the Blueberry Tom Collins with Journeyman Gin Bilberry Black Hearts, and fresh lemon and blueberry juices. Even the dessert menu has healthy options, like chia pudding with sweet almond milk and citrus.
Chicago’s first location of Lyfe Kitchen is up and running, and it’s rife with nutritious fare. Vegetarian and gluten-free dishes play a huge role on the menus throughout the day, and each item comes with calorie and sodium information, so customers know what they’re ordering. Start your day with the morning tofu wrap or the farmers’ market egg white frittata, and later in the day progress to edamame hummus, kale Caesar salad, veggie burgers, and quinoa crunch wraps. To drink, Lyfe Kitchen has a bunch of refreshing Lyfe waters in flavors such as hibiscus-beet, ginger-mint-chia, and cucumber-mint.
Rogers Park’s Heartland Cafe has long been a bastion of good, wholesome food on the far north side, renowned for its vegetarian preparations and cleaner substitutes for comfort foods such as burgers, sandwiches, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes. All the innate comfort is there, just a bit better for you, so it’s a win-win. Under new managing partner Tom Rosenfeld and new chef Kim Gracen, Heartland Cafe recently underwent a bit of a revival, updating the menu with a slew of new dishes that adhere to the restaurant’s longstanding philosophies, but with more contemporary flavors. Dishes include fritters smothered in vegan gravy, vegan buckwheat pancakes, pumpkin seed- and sunflower seed-flecked porridge, buffalo chili, vegan seitan French dip, turkey meatloaf, maple-glazed tofu, and lots more. And those mashed potatoes you think you're eating? They're actually mashed root vegetables.
The Field Bistro
1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago
(312) 922-9410
Website
Summer House Santa Monica
1954 N. Halsted Street, Chicago
(773) 634-4100
Website
Beatrix
519 N. Clark Street, Chicago
(312) 284-1377
Website
Lyfe Kitchen
413 N. Clark Street, Chicago
(312) 836-5933
Website
Heartland Cafe
7000 N. Glenwood Avenue, Chicago
(773) 465-8005
Website
