Coffee & Treats in Elmwood Park

Lilly Jane's Cupcakes' founder Kerri Dunn took the name for her dessert shop from her two grandmothers, Lillie Russell and Phyllis Jayne LeValley. As a little girl, she spent countless hours learning how to bake within their kitchens where many of her original cupcake creations were born. Today, these creations bake to fruition within the pink walls of her own space. Staffers pile buttercream onto 9 to 12 rotating cupcake flavors such as Super Chocolate and Strawberry Fields–a white cake infused with strawberries and topped with strawberry icing. They also design custom sugar cookies to help make graduating, getting married, or being really, really hungry more special.

Since its 1981 Arkansas inception, TCBY has churned out chilly yogurt-based desserts brimming with real dairy and live active cultures. Operations now span 450 stores nationwide, updated for the digital confection age with chic décor, a modernized logo, and nutrition facts easily available. Twenty-eight soft-serve flavors spill forth from spigots in gourmet varieties such as white chocolate and mango sorbet, as hand-scooped options meld sugary cream and salty nuts with dollops of butter pecan or mocha almond. An array of toppings such as syrups, nuts or crumbled candies customize each chosen dessert, and juices, fresh fruit, and yogurt meld to form Beriyo smoothies such as the Pom Berry Blue.

After opening Riggio's Restaurant with her husband, Pasquale, Adreana Riggio became well known to the residents of Chicago's North Center neighborhood, who called her Mama. The year was 1952, and the scent of pizza was still unfamiliar in the city. Though the restaurant has since moved to Niles, customers are still treated like family. Diners can dig into savory Italian classics such as veal parmigiana and American dishes such as chopped steak with housemade mushroom gravy. The pizza menu brims with three sizes of thin-crust pies, which can be customized with ingredients such as pepperoni, spinach, or pineapple.

Against a backdrop of music and aromatic wafts of roasted coffee beans, Cafe Ballou's baristas serve a menu's worth of steamy mugs of fresh coffee and tea. The café's edibles and drinks are locally sourced, including coffee from Intelligentsia, custom-blended Tiesta teas, and a selection of baked goods provided by JR Dessert Bakery. Below the lofty, painted tin ceiling and low-hanging amber lights, sofas and wooden chairs offer cozy spots to surf the free WiFi, take in the collection of local artwork on the walls, or practice astral projection. The inviting space also hosts a calendar artistic events, including live music, poetry readings, and open-mic nights.

The Millionaire Monk and Berry Bonds aren’t characters on some wildly eccentric daytime soap. They're just two of the cheeky names Peeled's owners have given to the juices, smoothies, booster shots, and breakfast blends that pack the shop's beverage-heavy menu of healthy treats. Baristas versed in the art of hand-blending drinks make a range of beverages to-order from local and organic ingredients. The staff never adds sugars or chemicals to bulk up flavors or appease mad scientists’ taste buds. For customers looking for an especially salutary experience, the shop can supply enough juice for three-, five-, or seven-day juice cleanses that detoxify the body and bolster the immune system.

The juice spot's Evanston and Lincoln Park stores are both eco-friendly on the inside. The staff also keeps the juice bar's carbon footprint low by composting their fruit and vegetable matter.

Like the artisans of old, David Dattalo’s family has crafted confections for several generations. It began with his great-uncle, who worked at Mars and helped develop the 3 Musketeers bar, and made its way down the family tree with the opening of The Fudge Pot in 1963. Now, almost 60 years later, the Fudge Pot staffs fourth-generation chocolatiers who create fudges and candies on location so that customers can take a peek at their meticulous artistry. Dattalo affirms that all recipes are from his family, but that the butter english toffee is his own creation. After a year of trial-and-error taste tests, “I probably would’ve gotten disgusted and just quit,” Dattalo laughs, “but when [the toffee] came out [right] it tasted so good I had to stick with it.”

The golden toffees occupy a section of the succulent store display, which also houses molded chocolates in the shapes of sports mascots, animals, and automobiles. Dattalo estimates that the store stocks about 1,000 different molds, and his team of chefs can customize orders as well. They also craft 10 styles of fudge, the Pot’s specialty, in flavors such as chocolate rum walnut, and dip fresh strawberries in decadent chocolate.