Daisies restaurant in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood has been nabbing all sorts of accolades lately, and I was excited to check it out with my two cousins on a recent outing in October, 2025. I’ve been pretty disappointed with a lot of the more recent, Italian-inspired restaurant openings in Chicago, such as the over-hyped Il Carciofo, and I was really hoping for something special that I could recommend to my lovely readers. Luckily, Daisies totally delivered, and we were all super impressed with all of the dishes we chose, which was a lot!

I arrived right at open at 5pm on a Friday, and there was gobs of street parking available right out front of the restaurant on Milwaukee Avenue. The decor here is clean and minimalist, and gives a bit of a high-end bistro type of vibe, bordering on Scandinavian.

One of the highlights of this menu are the super unique craft cocktails on offer. We all tried something unusual sounding, but each one was surprising and amazing. My choice was the raspberry pretzel punch, which was tart, and the perfect amount of boozy. My cousins tried the mushroom margarita and the beet manhattan, which both sound weird but were also surprisingly cool. The mushroom margarita was subtly mushroomy, and gave the drink just the right touch of umami oomph. The beet manhattan was also subtly beety, but what I loved about it was the dill garnish. Who knew that dill and bourbon is the perfect combo?

Service here was great, although the pacing of the food once the place got super crowded around 7pm got a bit spotty. That said, everything on the menu is meant to share, so our server suggested how many dishes to try for a solid, satisfying dinner. We all agreed that what we ordered was a bit too much, but I was excited to try a whole bunch of different dishes, and luckily, pasta reheats pretty decently the next day.

For three of us, we ordered two starters and four pasta dishes, and we eschewed the protein section of the menu, since one of my cousins is vegetarian. We also had two desserts. Two of us had three drinks each, and one had two drinks, and all of this cost about $300 which I thought was extremely reasonable for the extraordinarily high quality food, cocktails and wines that we enjoyed.

So, lets get to the food! For the starters, I had to try the onion dip with house made ruffles. We skipped the caviar options, but you can order four different types to add to the dip ranging from an $18 supplement up to $135 for the fancy beluga caviar. I thought the onion dip, loaded with chives, was amazing, and the house made ruffles were thick enough to dip, but perfectly crispy. Yum!

We also ordered the seasonal fritto misto, which always include fluffy cheese curds in a very light tempura-like coating, along with seasonal vegetables. Since it’s autumn, we lucked out with delicata squash, zucchini, and sweet potatoes amongst the fried goodness. There was a tangy tarragon aioli for dipping. For a fried dish, it didn’t really feel greasy at all.

For the pastas, what I can tell you was that they were all excellent. Absolutely nothing was bad, or even fair, although some of the dishes were clearer favorites than others. First to come out were the potato gnocchi which were accompanied with chantarelle mushrooms, pancetta and thyme. While I think this was my least favorite dish, it was still amazingly flavorful. The gnocchi were fluffy, although very obviously potato, where I prefer ricotta gnocchi.

Served at the same time as the gnocchi was the pappardelle with mushroom ragu, cheese and basil. I think I would rank this dish number two out of the four pastas we had, mainly because the thick pappardelle pasta was made absolutely perfectly. I love a hefty, flat, al dente noodle, and these were flawless. The mushroom ragu was subtle and not overpowering.

We then had quite a long gap in between before the next two pastas came out and I started to wonder if they had forgotten them, but eventually they came and it was worth the wait! First up were the doppio ravioli with butternut squash and mojama, which is this dried fish sort of powder which we got on the side. Sprinkling just a tiny pinch on top of the ravioli added a massive savory punch to the otherwise somewhat bland ravioli. The ravioli themselves were unique in that they were double raviolis with different fillings on each side. Very cool, and this was the only dish that we completely finished, as you only get four large pieces.

The best dish to me, by far though, was the stracchi with lamb sugo, soft herbs, and pecorino. Holy cow this was amazing. The lamb sugo, basically like a ragu but made with cream instead of tomatoes, was to die for. It was so tender and succulent that it was downright dreamy. The stracchi pasta was al dente, and grabbed the sauce and lamb perfectly. This is the dish that I would implore anyone coming to not skip. Exquisite!

For dessert, I ordered the roasted vanilla ice cream which was custard-like in consistency, and the most vanilla-heavy ice cream I’ve ever had. The roasting of the vanilla really gave it an extra punch, and I will honestly order this every time when I come back here. The cousins split the ice cream crunch bar, which was difficult to eat, but also super rich and creamy once you got to the middle of it. It was too fudgy for me, but they loved it, and it definitely looked cool.

Gosh, we all really loved it here at Daisies, and I would agree with all of the awards and accolades and Top-whatever lists it’s been on lately. It was a bit of a haul for each of us to get here based on where we all live in comparison to Logan Square, but it was worth the effort. Easily one of the best Italian-inspired restaurants I’ve been to in Chicago in the last several years, you can bet it’ll make my own top-five list! Cheers!