📍 Added in September: The tight menu at the city’s sole Laotian restaurant reflects the affinity between Lao food and that of Thailand’s northeastern Isan province. The hits—hot, herbaceous, bright, with sour fermented funk—fuse in snappy lemongrass-scented sai ua sausage; naem khao (crispy sour pork rice salad); and beef laab, textured with toasted rice powder. But khao piak sen—lime leaf and galangal–spiked chicken soup with meatballs and chewy rice noodles—is a bowl of pure Lao soul.

📍 Added in September: This pastry shop from the minds behind Indo-Mex Mirra presents a similarly seamless union of Filipino and Indian flavors in the hands of pastry chef Reema Patel. Luminous chai-leche-flan doughnuts share the case with purple ube cheesecake crinkle cookies, while sweet-potato-and-mushroom breakfast dosas fly off the griddle, and baristas build cashew milk-date or dirty chai lattes before a rapt, ever-growing line.

📍 Added in September: Coffee and the two dominant Chicago pizza styles prevail here. It’s the thin-crust tavern-style you want to focus on, particularly the crackly crust longanisa-giardiniera, which twists the classic local combo with crumbled Filipino sausage and pickled vegetables; it feels right at home in this most Mexican of neighborhoods.

📍 Added in September: Unknown outside the Thai community (for now), this Tuesday–Wednesday pop-up operates like a Bangkok street specialist compared to the dabbler it replaced. Saturdays, a Thai-only menu drops on Facebook featuring one noodle dish: say, tom yam with “bouncy” pork; rich boat noodles; or guay jup, rolled rice noodles in five-spice broth with pork belly. With the help of friendly servers, you can customize by noodle type, protein, or condiments to build a bowl all your own.

📍 Added in September: This Little Palestine caterer serves Middle Eastern granny food you’re unlikely to encounter outside a home kitchen. There are a few tables but no set menu, so call well ahead, or trust: You might score the inverted pilaf casserole maqluba; or mansaf, jiggly braised lamb over rice and flatbread, drenched in yogurt sauce. It can get gutsy, but “innards”? That’s just masareen: roast or steamed sausages, stuffed with rice and ground lamb, which you’ll be helpless for.

The self-described “control freak” behind this brand-new ramen-ya spent a decade methodically studying his craft—and regularly selling out periodic pop-ups within seconds. The resulting tentacular housemade noodles and perfectly balanced broths are still the object of intense devotion, but in his long-awaited brick-and-mortar, it’s a little bit easier to score a bowl. With just two soup-based and two dry varieties, obsession and passion are evident in the bowl.

Little Palestine, aka Bridgeview, is the heart of the largest Palestinian community in America, and this former-fast-food-joint-turned-opulent-oasis is its pleasure center. Wood-grilled meats and seafood are the celebrated gems here, but treasures are all over the sprawling menu of mezes, salads, and sandwiches, such as makdous (oil-cured, walnut-stuffed baby eggplants) or arayes (crispy, griddled beef-lamb or Syrian cheese–stuffed pita).

“Arabic pizza” does no justice to the multiplicity of forms the namesake Levantine flatbread takes once rolled, tossed, and baked to order in the brick oven here. Top with za’atar and eggs for breakfast; sure, pepperoni and sauce for lunch; or fold over pastrami and akkawi cheese for dinner and you’ve barely begun tackling the options. Sandwiches stacked on seven-inch split rounds of sesame ka’aek, believed to be the precursor to the bagel, present another impossible challenge.

Parachute power couple Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark’s Ukrainian relief project employs a kitchen crew of refugees cooking modernized classics like duck-and-smoked-pear borscht, huckleberry-bacon-pecan varenyky, and sea buckthorn-and-feta potato pancakes. The menu’s beating heart is zakusky, a tiered, rolling cart of small bites like trout roe tarts, pickled mushrooms and tomatoes; Hokkaido herring with tropea onions; and lamb-stuffed, fried Crimean-style olives.

Among the 30-some recently opened Kyrgyz restaurants in these parts, get your bearings here, with all the hallmarks of a meaty, carb-loaded cuisine rooted in ancient nomadic lifeways: beefy, hand-pulled noodles; bulging, pumpkin-stuffed dumplings; savory, tandoor-tanned pastries; and sizzling shashlik skewers. Packing for a long ride on the steppes? The neighboring market stocks loads of imported products and locally produced dairy- and grain-based ferments.