Photo by Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
In case you didn't know, Chicago is serious about food. When you live in an arctic tundra, you can't mess around with bad, insubstantial food. That's why we appreciate well prepared, hearty offerings that will stick with you through miles of wind and snow. Baked goods also fall into this category, which is why most neighborhoods have at least one great bakery. They might not have a top chef in the kitchen, but these bakeries are Chi-town all stars.
Dinkel's Bakery
This Chicago landmark has been a mainstay since 1922, creating flaky delicacies from scratch, in the same Lakeview location. Dinkel's started as a Bavarian specialty bakery and is still famous for its buttery stollen. But there are lots of other goodies to choose from, including cinnamon buns, cake pops, strudels, pies and even chocolate dipped strawberries. There's also an adjoining cafe where customers can try something savory with their sugar. My fave is the spinach artichoke melt on warm potato bread.
Cafe Selmarie
This charming European-style bakery cafe is a Lincoln Square hallmark and it's always filled with locals sipping espresso or snatching up freshly made tortes. Cafe Selmarie serves up divine brunches (pesto scramble and chicken sausage) as well as tasty meals all day long but it's really all about the pasties here. A huge assortment of cakes, cookies and pies fill the shelves but the signature tortes, including raspberry Bavarian cream, Spanish almond and black forest, are the standouts.
Swedish Bakery
Despite the name and location in the historic Swedish enclave of Andersonville, the Swedish Bakery offers much more than Swedish treats. This small neighborhood shop specializes in Swedish coffee cakes, cookies and marzipan cakes as well as Northern European faves like petit fours, fruit glazed cakes and bread rolls. This is also the place for extravagantly decorated cupcakes, cheesecakes, spiced cookies and log cakes. Don't miss the popular cardamom sprinkled coffee cake.
Brown Sugar Bakery
The tagline for this Grand Crossing showstopper is "dangerously delicious" and just a glimpse of the hefty, buttercream covered cakes explains why. Brown Sugar Bakery is famous for soul food faves like caramel cakes, sweet potato pies and peach cobblers but the bakery also sells cheesecake, banana and bread pudding, and brownies. Sample the Porgy and Bess, a rich fudge cake topped with caramel.
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