CHICAGO — The best restaurant in Chicago this year, according to the city’s most famous food columnist, is a French bistro called Creepies, and the entire city has made its peace with this, which may say more about Chicago than any of the food does.

The restaurant, from husband-and-wife chef team David and Anna Posey, serves tarte flambée, steamed mussels, and brie cream puffs under a name that, on paper, sounds like a haunted Spirit Halloween. It started, the owners say, as an inside joke about a former building they toured that was, in fact, a little creepy. The joke stuck. The mussels are excellent.

“I said the name out loud in front of my mother,” said diner Marcus Feld, 34, eating a second helping of gnocchi near the window. “She said, ‘A restaurant called Creepies. In this economy.’ And then she finished her plate. She asked for the recipe for the cream puffs. She called the place Creepies three times and meant it fondly.”

That is the Creepies experience in miniature: the name arrives like a red flag, the food arrives like an apology, and by dessert the red flag is just decor.

City officials have taken the name in stride. “We’ve had worse,” said Aldermanic aide Dana Kowal, who was eating the tasting menu on the record because, she said, “I wanted the city to be on the record liking this.” A nearby high school junior, Tyler Nguyen, 16, said he had been dared to make a reservation for his grandparents. “They loved it. My grandma said the name made her laugh and the soup made her cry. She said those were the two things a restaurant should do.”

"You say 'I'm going to Creepies' to your spouse, and there's a half-second of silence. Then you eat the brie puff, and the silence becomes irrelevant. That's the whole business model."

CREEPIES: CREEPINESS ODDS & OUTCOMES

  • Name sounds haunted: 100%. Actual hauntings reported: zero. One diner thought the coat rack was "looking at him." It was a coat rack.
  • Best meal of the year (per the Food Guy): confirmed. Best name of the year: also confirmed, by default, because nobody else is close.
  • Diners who tried to talk the owners out of the name: many. Owners who listened: cute joke, they said, about the joke.
  • Grandparents converted by the name: at least one, on a dare.

The lesson for restaurant owners everywhere is that a terrible name is a free conversation, and a free conversation is worth roughly four advertising agencies, provided the food backs it up. The food backs it up.

At press time, the Poseys had announced a second location, and the internet had begun, gently, begging them not to call it Creepier.