27 Southern restaurants in Chicago that earn more on your cards

Chicago has 27 Southern restaurants in our listings: 26 take a dining program and 3 have a card perk. Most common price: $$ (moderate). Top neighborhoods: South Loop (3), Grand Crossing (2), and Near North Side (2).

27 restaurants

Restaurants
27
Neighborhoods
23
Cuisines
13
Dining programs
14
With a card perk
3

The 3 best cards to bring to dinner in Chicago

Ranked by what each card earns across this city's restaurants at our point valuations, counting the dining program that pays most at each one. Card credits aren't counted. inKind (18 restaurants) and AAdvantage Dining (13) are the most widespread dining programs here, out of 27 restaurants. American Express Gold Card tops the list here on its own dining rate — ≈$6.00 on a $100 dinner before any program.

All the best cards for dining

14 dining programs that pay in Chicago

Dining programs pay on top of your card. Join one, link a card, and every meal at a participating restaurant earns twice.

12 cuisines in Chicago

Southern in 23 Chicago neighborhoods

253 more cities and towns in Illinois

Some restaurant addresses, phone numbers, websites and cuisines come from Overture Maps Foundation open data (Meta and Microsoft, CDLA Permissive 2.0; Foursquare, Apache 2.0; AllThePlaces, CC0 1.0). Overture attribution Some neighbourhoods come from Who's On First boundaries (CC-BY 4.0). Who's On First licenses Some opening hours, phone numbers, websites and cuisines are © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0). OpenStreetMap copyright

Editorial disclosure: CardRewards.ai is an independent comparison service. Card data comes from issuers' published terms; catalog last published October 12, 2026, and each card page shows when its terms were last checked. Card issuers do not influence our rankings or content.