Lived around the corner from this place, but never thought to try it based on outside appearance. Recently I've seen a lot of posts on LTH forum talking about how good this place is. Gave it a try yesterday. Brought home a 1/2 lb of carnitas and 1/2 lb of steak barbacoa, comes with large container of onions, cilantro, lime, big cup of salsa and stack of homemade tortillas. Really really good. Will definitely go back.

Place is on Irving just west of Kimball. White painted exterior, black bars on all the windows and doors. it looks like a corner convenient store that you would go into to witness a robbery. Only a few tables inside, but I did see someone eating in. Had a massive bowl of Mexican chicken soup that looked really good as well.

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My neighborhood is really starting to develop a nice culinary scene. Here are some places pretty close to my condo, most of them walking distance.

Honey Butter Fried Chicken
Parachute
Little Bucharest
Kuma's
Hearth and Crust
Pisolino
Smoque
D'Candela
Leader Bar (supposed to have really good pizza, never been)
Beograd
La Villa
Cafe Tola

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Bread and Wine closed up, there is a burger place in there now. The couple who ran that were really nice. There is a newish place called Bar Kedzie or something around Kedzie and Berteau. Those guys came by our place. I know they were showing that Nelson Algren documentary one night. There is that good Morroccan place, Shokran, on Irving close to the Kennedy off ramp.

What's interesting to me over there is people are opening so many standalone restaurants, not pub-type places with better food. I suppose once you do the math on the liquor license, dram shop, etc, you can get a better idea of the break-even point on having it. A BYOB permit costs nothing, I found out recently. It is a checkbox on a form.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Forgot about Shokran, place is great. Been there a handful of times.

I heard the new hot dog place is nothing special.

We did just lose another good place in the neighborhood, HQ Quintano. Really weird location and hard to tell it was even a restaurant, but it was actually really good and somewhat upscale casual. Went out of business a month ago.

We also have that really famous Thai place at Kedzie and Berteau, forgot the name. Never been.

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It's called Arun's and it's not that good. So many better, cheaper Thai places in Chicago--which is one of the best cities for Thai food in the U.S.

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Arun's. He's closing that place, too, but it's open-ended. He own's that Thai cultural center that is in the old Albany Park police station at Pulaski and Sunnyside. They have a restaurant in there that's pretty good, but just casual.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

I never knew that HQ Quintero place was a restaurant until after it closed.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

exactly. and I'm pretty sure he's a highly trained chef, worked for some famous people. From the outside it looked like a dive bar that sold both kinds of beer, PBR and Schlitz. On the inside it was a nice looking restaurant. Had an amazing pot roast sandwich that I would get every time.

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