LYFE Kitchen: The Hottest Healthy River North Restaurant

For a few weeks now, Chicago’s culinary scene has been buzzing about how incredible “LYFE Kitchen” in River North is. Unsure of exactly what this restaurant was, I checked out their website and quickly learned it is the latest concept from Chef Art Smith and Chef Tal Ronnen (brought over from California).

Enough said. With their names attached to anything, I’m there.

LYFE Kitchen is a fast-casual style restaurant with 5-star quality food. Their focus is based around how food can do all sorts of amazing things like: make you feel good and healthy all while supporting local farms and promoting sustainability.

With all their dishes less than 600 calories, each menu item is carefully crafted to provide you with a healthy, fulfilling, and not to mention, aesthetically pleasing dish.

Last week, I had the opportunity to dine at LYFE Kitchen with my Luxury Living Chicago colleague, Amy (it’s best to go with a friend or in a small group so that you can try lots of things). We headed over around 12:30 and prepared ourselves for what we thought would be a super long line. We were right, the line was nearly out the door, but we were pleasantly surprised by the experience for two reasons:

1) The staff at LYFE Kitchen was walking the line passing out samples of menu items, offering to answer any questions and just keeping us company as we waited. I think this team may be one of the most passionate and friendliest in Chicago.

2) The line went really quickly! From the time we arrived, until the time we ordered it was only about 10 minutes.

The food completely matched the unbelievable ambience of this restaurant. Who knew you could eat such decadent dishes like Caesar salad and fried chicken and actually feeling good about it? I sure didn’t.

If you do head over there and can only try one thing, do yourself a huge favor and try “Art’s Unfried Chicken” (pictured above). This incredible culinary work of “art” (no pun intended) is not only beautiful to look at, but tastes totally amazing. The chicken is served with roasted brussels sprouts, butternut squash, dried cranberries, cashew cream and a dijon vinaigrette.

As if it can’t get any better, the “Unfried Chicken” (along with most of their other dishes) can be made vegan/vegetarian friendly by using alternative proteins like Gardein and quinoa.

Oh, and in addition to being an an all-star restaurant, this is definitely the place to be seen in Chicago. While we were there, we ran into Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, NBC Chicago meteorologist Cheryl Scott and anchorman, Bill Kurtis!

Trust me; treat yourself and take your next lunch break at LYFE Kitchen located at 413 N. Clark Street, Chicago IL 60654 (located in the AMLI River North building).