The Most Famous Burger in Chicago Isn't the Reason to Go

In French culinary shorthand, au cheval means a dish served with a fried egg on top. Brendan Sodikoff took that idea, built a dark and narrow diner on West Randolph in 2012, and created something that became one of the most visited restaurants in Chicago almost entirely on the strength of a single item. The cheeseburger made Au Cheval a national destination. At its peak the kitchen was reportedly moving five hundred of them on a weekend day. That number tells you everything about what this place became and almost nothing about what it actually is.

The West Loop was just becoming a serious dining corridor when Au Cheval arrived. Sodikoff's instinct was specific: take the American diner, strip away the irony, and execute it with the kind of precision and confidence that makes familiar food feel like a revelation. Leather booths, mahogany, a long bar with a direct sightline to the griddle. The aesthetic has since been copied enough times that it is easy to forget Au Cheval was doing it first. Walking in still feels like the reference and not the imitation.

The burger is genuinely good. Two thin griddled patties, American cheese, Dijonnaise, house pickles — the architecture is sound and the execution is consistent. If you want the fried egg on top, get it. That is the premise of the name. But here is my honest take after years of both: the burger at Small Cheval, Hogsalt's stripped-down fast-casual spin-off, hits with a clarity and balance that the full Au Cheval version edges away from. At a certain point the additions tip the scale and you start losing the thread of the thing. That is not a failure. It is the nature of elevation — sometimes the original premise is already perfect and more is just more.

What makes Au Cheval worth the visit extends well past the burger, and that is the stronger case for the restaurant at this point. The chilaquiles are genuinely excellent and rarely get the credit they deserve here. The crispy fries are done with the same confidence as everything else. Foie gras and eggs is exactly as luxurious as it promises — the kind of dish that earns its place on a diner menu by committing fully to the absurdity of the proposition.

And then there is the bone marrow. I am a sucker for roasted bone marrow on toast and will order it anywhere it appears, which means I have eaten enough of it to know when a kitchen is taking it seriously. Au Cheval takes it seriously. The bones come piled high. It is the dish I think about when I think about this place.

The space itself does something specific and hard to articulate. It is small and dense and operates at full tilt, with the bar right up against the action at the griddle. Rich leather and dark wood, the whole thing confident enough to feel like a film set without becoming a caricature. Nostalgic without being cute about it. That tension is Hogsalt's signature, and Au Cheval is still its clearest expression.