The Room Gets You. The Eggplant Keeps You.
Naia is the most dramatic room to open on the Chicago River in years. The mezze section gives it something the view alone can't.
There's a moment at the bottom of the grand staircase at 300 N. LaSalle where Chicago shows you what it built along this river and dares you not to be impressed. The water opens up. The bridges frame themselves like someone placed them there on purpose. The skyline stacks behind it all and you remember, maybe not for the first time, that this city did something genuinely extraordinary along this stretch of water and most people walk past it every day without stopping to look.
Naia makes you stop.
DineAmic Hospitality built something here that commands the room before you've ordered a drink. Twelve thousand square feet across nearly a full city block. A hundred and fifty feet of river frontage. A coliseum-style dining room where every seat angles toward the view, anchored by a 50-foot hand-carved stone wall referencing the Naiads, the ancient Greek river deities the restaurant is named after. There's a planted olive tree inside. Actual ceramic pots. Dry arid landscaping that makes you feel briefly like you've been dropped somewhere along the Aegean coast, which is a sentence I didn't expect to write about River North.
There is also a luxury yacht shored up outside that you can rent for a private dinner. I did not rent the yacht. But I noted the yacht.
Start at the bar if you can get a seat, which is easier than scoring a reservation. The NA list was more than serviceable, which I was genuinely pleased to see. The cocktails were craft-made and the crew I was with was happy, which matters because the prices are the kind that require the drinks to actually deliver.
Order the mezze. This is where Naia earns the most of its real estate. Allen and I were in Istanbul earlier this year and the spread plate took me straight back. The smoked eggplant was the best thing on the table: deeply flavored, properly smoky, the kind of thing you keep reaching for even after you've decided you're done. The truffle honey labneh was excellent and notably made with actual truffle rather than truffle oil, which is the difference between something that tastes like a perfume counter and something that tastes like food. The handmade pitas came out warm and pillowy and were the correct vehicle for all of it.
The saganaki arrived on fire, touched with lemon, heavy on oregano. Dramatic and genuinely good, though a little salty. Still loved it.
The skewers were good to mid. The fish was the lowest of what we ordered and I'd skip it on a return visit. Some of the plating was slapdash in a way that didn't match the room.
Here's the thing though. The food takes big swings. Even when it misses, it doesn't miss timidly. Everything has flavor. Everything has a point of view. The misses feel more like ambition running ahead of execution than a kitchen that doesn't know what it's doing.
That's why this is a Solid and not a Heavy Hitter. The space is as good as anything that's opened in Chicago in years. The mezze section is worth the reservation alone. But the unevenness keeps it from being the place you tell everyone to go right now. It's the place you tell people to go when they're ready to deal with the wait.
Reservations open 14 days out at midnight on OpenTable. The bar is your friend if you can't get one. The smoked eggplant is worth the trip.
Stay up-to-date
