Most common restaurant cuisines in Chicago

Food is more than just a means of satiation and sustenance—it's an essential part of cultures around the world. Eating the dishes that are native to one's home country creates a vital connection between oneself and one's ancestors. While people often cannot take all of their personal belongings with them when they emigrate, cooking meals that bring back tastes and smells can remind them where they came from and help them pass down traditions in their new country.

It's also common for immigrants to build ethnic and cultural communities in their new hometowns. For example, there are high concentrations of Filipino Americans in Los Angeles; there's a large prevalence of Irish Americans in Boston; and Greek Americans make up a substantial proportion of the population in Tarpon Springs, Florida. You can imagine, then, that it'd be easier to find kare-kare in LA, champ and black pudding in Boston, and moussaka on Florida's Gulf Coast.

A study from Grand Canyon University investigated the most popular cuisines across major U.S. cities by using Yelp data to identify the number of five-star restaurants for each cuisine. The research yielded many interesting results, including that Mexican restaurants have the most five-star reviews in 44 out of the 50 cities analyzed.

To find out what kind of restaurants are most likely to line the streets in your neck of the woods, Stacker compiled a list of the most common restaurant cuisines in Chicago using data from Yelp. Restaurants from surrounding towns and cities may be included in the total results.

Read on to find out which types of foods dominate your neighborhood and to get inspired for your next meal out.