Neighborhoods

Little Italy / Taylor Street, Chicago

A compact Italian-American strip along Taylor Street, next to the UIC campus, still anchored by old-school red-sauce spots. Best for classic Italian-American food, a UIC-adjacent walk. Served near the Blue Line's UIC-Halsted stop.

By the Extra Chicago editorial team·Updated Oct 20262 min read·2 sections

An old-school Italian restaurant storefront in a Chicago neighborhood

Photo: Katie Wasserman / Unsplash

The short version

✓Little Italy sits along Taylor Street, a compact strip carrying Chicago's Italian-American heritage in its delis, bakeries and old-school red-sauce restaurants.
✓The neighborhood sits directly next to the University of Illinois Chicago campus, giving it a mixed student-and-old-neighborhood energy.
✓The Blue Line's UIC-Halsted stop is the nearest 'L' access, a short walk from Taylor Street's restaurant strip.
✓It's also reachable as a walk from the Pink or Green Lines' Loop-area stops for visitors already downtown, though UIC-Halsted is the more direct option.
✓Best for classic Italian-American food and a UIC-adjacent walk — a compact, easy add-on rather than a full day's plan.

A compact Italian-American strip next to UIC

Little Italy is smaller and more concentrated than its name might suggest — a few blocks along Taylor Street rather than a sprawling district, but genuinely dense with the Italian-American heritage the name promises. Old-school delis, bakeries and red-sauce restaurants that have run for generations sit alongside newer arrivals, and the strip still functions as a real neighborhood dining destination rather than a preserved-in-amber tourist stop.

The neighborhood's other defining feature is its proximity to the University of Illinois Chicago campus, which sits immediately adjacent and gives Taylor Street a genuine mix of longtime Italian-American families, students and university staff. That mix keeps the restaurants busy year-round rather than depending on a single visitor season, and it's part of why the food here has stayed genuinely good rather than drifting toward a tourist-menu version of itself.

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Taylor Street's red-sauce tradition is a different cuisine from the city's wider steakhouse scene, covered here.

Getting there: nearest stop, not inside it

The Blue Line's UIC-Halsted stop is the most direct 'L' access, a short walk from the platform onto Taylor Street's restaurant strip — worth noting plainly that the stop sits at the edge of the neighborhood rather than in its center, so budget a few extra minutes of walking beyond the transit ride itself. The Blue Line also runs direct to O'Hare, which makes Little Italy a workable stop on the way in or out of the city for visitors flying through that airport.

For visitors already downtown, it's also an easy walk from the Pink or Green Lines' Loop-area stops, since Little Italy sits just west of the Loop and West Loop/Fulton Market. Either route works; the UIC-Halsted stop is simply the more direct one if you're coming from elsewhere on the Blue Line.

Nearest stop: UIC-Halsted (Blue Line).
Also reachable by a walk from the Pink or Green Lines' Loop-area stops.
Nearby neighborhoods: West Loop/Fulton Market, Pilsen.

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