Restaurants in Des Plaines

Like a carousel made of beautiful meals instead of parade horses, Dream Dinners sports a monthly rotating menu of up to 17 dinner selections designed to be healthy and savory for you and your loved ones. For March, the chefs have prepared a series of delicious feasts, including citrus-marinated fish tacos, sage-crusted pork chops, bruschetta chicken skewers, chicken mirabella, and build-your-own calzones. Hungry chessmasters can plan five suppers ahead with meals that serve six ($30 average price) or three ($15 average price). Dream Dinners usually requires a minimum order of 36 servings, but this is waived with your Groupon.

Chef and owner Joseph (ZouZou) Abraham concocts an authentic Lebanese menu of award-winning small plates fit for pairing with a liberal BYOB policy. Voted Best Falafel by Chicago magazine, Semiramis's famed falafel ($4 for four pieces; $6 for a sandwich) delights diners with a subtle fusion of light, refreshing ingredients. Similarly, the vegetarian plate unites hummus, baba gannouj, tabbouleh, falafel, and dolma in a meatless parade ($12+), and lentil soup ($3.50) charms palates with a subtle kick. And like a pop supergroup, the chef's lamb, beef, and chicken shawarma are lean, spicy, and impossibly catchy ($6+ for a sandwich; $12+ for an entree).

Chef Kasra Medhat's refined culinary techniques draw from his diverse gastronomic history, from his childhood filled with Turkish- and Iranian-style family meals to his college internship at a Chicago gourmet restaurant, as well as his catering work. Today, Kasra captains Magnolia Cafe, where he infuses all that passion and experience into his innovative French-American recipes.

In the kitchen, Kasra and staff cobble together ingredients plucked during their peak growing season in a variety of meat and seafood dishes. Upon white tablecloths, plates of appetizers and entrees meet with the house's specialty martinis and boutique wines in crystalline glasses, which are great for clinking or playing pieces from Mozart's glass-harmonica phase. Soft jazz music pulses amid the exposed brick and beams that ring the dining room, which is speckled with hanging photos of the flowers from which the establishment takes its name.

Pannenkoeken Cafe's specialty Dutch-style pancakes draw breakfast and brunch eaters to the teeny, brightly lit eatery. Thinner than a buttermilk pancake, but still slightly thicker than a standard crêpe and abundantly thicker than an unwritten novel about crêpes, the café's namesake cakes come in a mix of savory and sweet varieties, such as grilled salami and havarti cheese or apple and ginger marmalade. Freshly squeezed juice and espresso-fueled beverages pair with any of the dozen pannenkoeken options, omelets, and other breakfast fare on the menu.

Rotating novelty bowties are expressive, yet impractical. Mado's rotating menu options, however, combine the flare of fresh concepts with the consumable perks of seasonal, locally-produced ingredients. Scripted along the chalkboard-laden walls of Mado, chefs and owners Allie and Rob Levitt have devised a rotating menu that recently featured antipasti options such as fried farm-egg bruschetta flavorfully sealed with confit fat ($9) and a hearty puree of brandade awaiting a dip from grilled grains ($12). Hanger steak with gorgonzola polenta ($26) or rainbow trout dressed in white beans and cider brown butter ($25) are both bathed in flames on Mado's signature wood-fired grill, where chefs are known to gather for experimental recipes and flashlight-assisted ghost stories.

Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating, founded by the superheroine-alias-sounding Seattle Sutton, packages meals of controlled calories for customer consumption. This Groupon covers Seattle Sutton's 1,200-calorie meal plan—21 complete meals that don't total more than 1,200 total calories in a day. Seattle Sutton's menus, like a carousel of contained calorie intake, rotate on a five-week basis, ensuring that you won't be stuck eating the same meal every other day. Menu items include chicken with pineapple sauce, rice con queso, roasted red-pepper hummus, and stuffed potato. Delivery is extra and depends on where you live, so check with Seattle Sutton's Healthy Eating before signing up for deliveries to your moon condo.