Little Vietnam Restaurant, Chicago

Within a year of opening, Little Vietnam Restaurant had already been named Chicago magazine's Best Vietnamese Cheap Eats and praised for its Vietnamese-style iced coffee by ABC 7 news. Perhaps that's because owner Ricky Dinh's taken every detail into account. He knows how to make every dish on the menu. He trained all the servers himself. He even decided on how much spacing should be between words on the menu. His attention to detail is also why the food's prepared from fresh ingredients, ranging from a fried egg topping the jasmine rice platter to wine-marinated rib-eye steak in the bò lúc lắc to the tofu in the vegetarian pho.