Walking into a mariscos restaurant is the quickest way to start daydreaming about an afternoon in coastal Mexico. The air is alive with the upbeat rhythms of banda or norteño music, the kind that ...

Oliver Poilevey just wants to cook. The Chicago chef’s straightforward goal has gotten slightly more complicated since he rather quickly became a restaurateur with a swelling mini-restaurant empire.

Over the last several years, it has seemed like more and more Mexican mariscos restaurants were creeping into town, and when I did a count recently, it occurred to me that there were enough to warrant ...