Restaurants in Palatine

In the kitchen of El Sombrero Restaurant, Chef Ignacio "Nacho" Suchil prepares Mexican favorites such as big burritos, corn-tortilla enchiladas, and fish tacos made with icelandic cod and lime. While live music plays in the dining room, he splashes housemade creole sauce onto grilled shrimp and tosses skirt steaks onto blazing grills. El Sombrero Restaurant augments its eats with a game room, outdoor seating, and a lunch buffet on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Since 1979, a collection of family chefs has filled El Torero Restaurant & Bar's dining room with the aromas of authentic Mexican cuisine. Equipped with a catch of fresh ingredients, chefs drizzle chicken with special mole, green, and garlic sauces, and broil prime skirt steak before topping it with zucchini or poblano peppers. In the construction of their fleet of specialty enchiladas, cooks sauté shrimp and melt savory cheeses before en-rainbowing the whole ensemble with colorful veggies.

Outside the kitchen, bartending brethren supplement bites with margaritas forged from 100% agave tequila, and fruit cocktails concocted from the likes of Curacao and amaretto. Tall, vibrant purple booths cradle patrons more effectively than a robotic grandmother, and floor-to-ceiling windows illuminate gentle pastel-yellow walls.

All too often, embracing authenticity means sacrificing creativity, but the chefs in San Gabriel Mexican Café’s kitchen strive to incorporate both. They infuse classic tuna ceviche with bites of mango and passion fruit, melding tropical sweetness into the savory dish. They busily wield mortars and pestles all day to grind guacamole to order, while their ovens churn out a continuous stream of fresh-baked tortillas. Those tortillas enwrap tacos, enchiladas, and fajitas, but the chefs’ true specialties lie elsewhere on the menu. They enrich the flavor of pablano-chile sauced chicken with ground huitlacoche, an earthy, sweet fungus that grows on corn. They heartily recommend the molcajete, a traditional bowl made from volcanic stone and filled with stewed meat, three chile salsa, and cactus leaf.

Greek Village’s white-washed exterior, which is trimmed with blue shutters and draped in vines, whisks diners to Grecian shores even before they enter the lavishly decorated interior, ready to be plied with classic eats. As servers ignite brandy-soaked saganaki at white-draped tables, diners peruse a menu of traditional Greek fare and Mediterranean specialties. Chefs plate fresh seafood and spear grilled meats onto kebabs, then broil tender cuts of lamb to bronze it for swimsuit season on the Greek Islands. Tongues that utter specialties such as moussaka and spanakotiropita are rewarded for their efforts with platefuls of the much-beloved dishes.

Rustic wooden barrels top the bar’s shelves, while stucco-style walls, indoor greenery, and sumptuously hung curtains transport visitors to the streets of a Grecian village as quickly as a homesick Aegean Airlines jet. On Saturdays, a belly dancer’s smoothly rotating hips hypnotize tables at 7:30 p.m. until live music reanimates them at 8 p.m.

The grill holds court in the kitchen of Mina Mediterranean Restaurant, where flavors from Egypt and Morocco sizzle across a menu of all-halal meat dishes, such as kebabs and tagines, as well as veggie offerings. Morsels of chicken and beef prepared three different ways tumble over a mound of seasoned rice and grilled peppers on the Mina platter ($16.99), described as "a panoramic sampling of the kitchen’s versatility" by the Chicago Sun-Times, which also lauded the "superb" service. Beyond the kitchen, the dining room hosts white-cloaked tables set amid paintings of villagescapes and trompe l'oeil murals that resemble courtyard walls painted with trompe l'oeil murals. A full bar dispatches wine and other nectars as patrons bob to the beats of live music on Friday and Saturday nights.

Pockets' health-conscious chefs have stuffed stomachs with fresh, all-natural ingredients for more than 20 years, creating low-fat, high-protein combinations of vegetables, fine cheese, and lean meats. Within freshly baked multigrain bread, selections such as spinach, salami, turkey, and tuna combine with edamame beans, crunchy noodles, dried cranberries, and a splash from one of more than 10 dressings, creating a snack more portable than a bicycle made of chocolate. Menu pages also brim with eight healthy salads, seven hearty calzones, and a kids' menu with pint-size portions and sides of magic. Not content with just challenging fast-food ideals, the locally owned Pockets furthers change in its community by regularly donating up to 50% of its profit to charities such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Fox Valley Heart Foundation.