Restaurants in Kankakee

CJ's features a delicious menu of classic American cuisine. There's a heavy dose of hearty Southern regional dishes like biscuits and gravy and the Sausage Breakfast Casserole. There are even a few Southwestern items like the Southwestern Breakfast Burrito:  eggs, chorizo, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and queso blanco, wrapped in a flour tortilla and topped with fresh salsa. But the unifying force behind CJ's menu is that it's downright satisfying comfort food. Check out the menu. Weekend brunch is CJ's specialty, but their dinner menus is also tops - especially the local favorite barbeque meatloaf tower, which the Chicago Tribune claims "at least one guy at every table orders." CJ's is only open on Saturday's & Sundays. The weekends-only thing just makes people want it even more, just like those weekends-only hospitals that have lines around the block Saturday morning.

When executive chef Toyoji Hemmi surveys the restaurant's daily deliveries of fresh seafood, he envisions how the fish can be used to create exciting, new sushi entrees instead of just the widely expected staples. Food & Wine magazine praised this dedication to inventive flavor combinations in 2005, labeling chef Hemmi an "innovator" and calling him one of its "favorite iconoclasts" in the United States.

He accentuates maki with seemingly disparate ingredients—including rosemary, walnuts, and cherry tomatoes—that add new dimensions to the rolls' familiar tastes, textures, and pronunciations. Established Japanese flavors remain at the forefront of other items though, such as the wasabi-rubbed filet mignon and the organic cha-soba noodles. This distinctive interplay between contemporary and traditional approaches helped to earn the menu a score of "very good to excellent" from Zagat.

The dining room's vaguely industrial setting also toes the line between contemporary and historic, featuring rustic brick walls and exposed wooden rafters as well as chic, low-slung chairs and modern track lighting. Diners can peek behind the stone-countered sushi bar and watch the chefs assemble platters of maki and nigiri, or join the bartenders, who pass their evenings pouring tastes of sake and shochu.

State's main courses average around $17, and their drink selection is extensive, so whether you feed 2-3 people with your Groupon or go nuts on desserts and drinks for yourself, you're getting some serious value. State's nice wood interior, candles, and tall, circular booths combined with their flat-screen TVs showing both sports games and digital art, create an upscale supper club-meets-sports bar atmosphere. The cuisine is mostly American with some Asian and Italian highlights. Enjoy a high definition football games in style with a bacon-mozzarella burger or a cornmeal-crusted grouper fish over leeks. At night enjoy a bumpin' club atmosphere. Dress sharp & impress everyone on the floor with your remarkable Groupon value, downing 57% more appetizers and cocktails than everyone around you - while paying the same price!

Sultan's is already known for its great prices. With this Groupon, you’ll feel like you’re getting exquisite Mediterranean cuisine in exchange for Monopoly money. You’ll have access to a menu that features Falafel, Hummus, Tabboule and the always phonetically palette-pleasing Baba Ghanooj. And you haven't eaten a salad until you've tried your hand at what Time Out Chicago called the “best salad bar around.”

One glance at the Bonsoirée menu and it becomes clear that the chic, minimalist décor is pretty much the only thing minimalist about the place. Each dish in chef/owner Shin Thompson and chef de cuisine Luke Creagan’s "exquisitely crafted" four- ($58), seven- ($85), and 13-course ($150) flavor symphonies draws inspiration from a range of cultures and blends traditional Japanese presentation with classic French techniques. A new menu is introduced monthly, but a recent four-course line-up kicks off a night of gourmandizing with a salad of crispy Suzuki, grilled-haricot vert, and pickled ramp with lotus root drizzled in genmaicha vinaigrette and rhubarb sorbet. A fava-bean and spring-pea soup spiced with curried artichoke and green garlic then drum-rolls the curtain-raise on the meal’s centerpiece: a roast of grass-fed spring lamb from Mint Creek Farms, served with potato-and-chickpea confit, shochu Japanese–barbecue sauce, fried potato skins, smoked shimeiji mushrooms, and death mustard, a mysterious savory substance. A dessert of gingerbread ice-cream sandwich sided with ginger-cinnamon-bark ice cream and sprinkled with pecans helps quivering taste buds waft gently back down to earth. If you’re afraid that talking will destroy the food’s delicate interplay of complex flavors, you and your dining companions can entertain yourselves by watching Chef Thompson work his magic and occasionally subdue a cutlery-wielding octopus in the open kitchen window. Also, make use of Bonsoirée's new wine program: call Provenance Food and Wine, Cellar Rat, or Randolph Wine Cellars ahead of time, and get a bottle of wine delivered to Bonsoirée free of charge in advance of your reservation at no extra cost.

Mastering the secrets of Indian cooking takes a lifetime, but tasting the mystery takes a much shorter period than a lifetime. We're pleased to bring back a popular Groupon deal: $15 for $35 worth of delicious Indian fare at Randolph Street eatery Veerasway. Plus, today's Groupon also gets a year's subscription to Time Out Chicago for free. Follow @Groupon_Says on Twitter.