Where Are Chicago's Best Macarons?

By Anthony Todd in Food on May 2, 2012 5:20PM

We can't stop reading Serious Eats Chicago. Their dessert column (written by Redeye Critic and Who's Hungry Mag writer Kate Bernot) gets us through sad, grey days when sweets are nowhere in sight. Usually she focuses on just one dessert, but this week she teamed up with Lindsey Becker and canvassed the city, looking for the best macarons. What a delicious project.

We have to toot our own horn a little bit - we published this list back in 2010, and three of our top five made it into their list. And we didn't even use a fancy rubric! Serious Eats, however, took a very scientific approach, scoring each treat in five different categories. We asked Bernot how she figured out what was a truly great macaron.

"Taste is subjective, but we tried to impose a quantitative points system to rank these. We assigned each bakery's macarons a value based on five categories: shell texture, filling texture, flavor, aesthetics, and value. Each of these were ranked on a five point scale, then combined for a total score. Though this seems tedious, it's the only way we could get down to the tiny details that differentiate between a good macaron and an outstanding macaron."

You'll have to check out their list to find the winner (we don't want to give anything away!) but some Chicagoist favorites are on the list, including Bittersweet and Toni Patisserie. Also some surprises, like Slurping Turtle, and some obvious favorites, like Floriole and Fritz Pastry. Be careful - if you do this at your office, you'll find yourself eating the first trashy plastic-wrapped pastry you see.