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Bar/Lounge
Bangers & Lace evokes a traditional hunting lodge, complete with a deer head on the wall and other stuffed game animals scattered about. It's a classy place, though, with lace curtains on the tall windows and 32 taps topped by
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Bar/Lounge
No matter the time of day, a wait is practically guaranteed at this U-shaped bar manned by bartenders who spin classic country and honky-tonk on vinyl. Here are well-engineered cocktails alongside cheap domestic beers, and if you can't decide between
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Bar/Lounge
I'm writing about Fountainhead as a bar—I've yet to try the food, though the menu certainly looks tempting (if perhaps a tad spendy). I come here for the beer: on most nights you can choose from a fine selection of
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Classic Bar
With board games and a Ping-Pong room, this is a place where you could easily pass a few hours reconnecting with your childhood, and maybe for this reason it attracts a younger crowd than some of the other neighborhood institutions.
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Bar/Lounge
Ever since I moved here in 1996, Hopleaf has been my favorite beer bar in Chicago. It’s most famous for its fetishistic selection of Belgian beers—more than a third of the two downstairs bars' 64 taps on any given day,
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Classic Bar
Hungry Brain is one of the coziest spots in Chicago. You've probably passed this small bar over and over and never realized it was there. Its interior is comfortable and lit with the glow of beer signs and Christmas lights.
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Music venue
Some assholes are trying to rebrand the corner of Devon and Ashland "RogersEdge," but bars like the Jackhammer should help keep gentrification at bay. Unlike neighbor Touche, though, the 'Hammer's no seedy dive. As a local alternative to the Boystown
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Bar/Lounge
This beer, bacon, and sausage emporium is not as refined or as interesting as its Randolph Row neighbors. And it’s definitely not as popular, at least judging from the number of empty seats on a recent Friday night in the
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Music venue
As the name would indicate, the Long Room is a shotgun-style bar, with tables along the facing wall allowing a thin walkway to a back room with a couple more tables and a few booths. It's always been a welcoming
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Bar/Lounge
At Longman & Eagle the throngs are as apt to tie up the tables early Monday evening as they are late Friday night. Good thing there's a craft cocktail list delectable (and affordable) enough to make it worth sampling just
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Bar/Lounge
In August 2010 arts raconteur Ed Marszewski transformed his mother's packaged-goods bar into one of the city's premier watering holes for international craft beers and whiskeys. The bar offers more than 450 brews in bottles and on tap, along with
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Corner Tap
To say that the Matchbox is cozy would be an understatement. Wedge-shaped, it's 15 feet across at its widest point and about three and a half feet at its narrowest. It can be tricky to squeeze past seated patrons to
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Bar/Lounge
An chummy, unprepossessing Old Style bar with a number of diversions to help evaluate your ability to drive home: board games, darts, pool, and a large beer garden where you can throw horseshoes and bags, and grill your own grub.
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American
Conceptually, Parson's has as much if not more in common with Big Star as it does with a typical Harold's Chicken Shack. It has a great big patio (it's an ice rink in the winter), servicing drinkers with brisk, boozy
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Patio /Beer Garden
Crowds line up to get onto the glass-walled patio of Roof, the industrial-sleek black-and-gray lounge on the 27th floor of the Wit Hotel. Two tips: arrive around opening time, and check out "the hangover," a table for eight on a
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Wine Bar
Dark and comfy, with an outdoor patio that in the warmer months brightens an otherwise stark intersection, this is a fine spot to take a sip or two from an intriguing list of small-batch beverages, including a passel of interesting
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Craft Cocktails
Heisler Hospitality's revamp of an old Polish dive, featuring craft beers and "spirit-forward" cocktails from barmen Wade McElroy (Trenchermen, Barrelhouse Flat) and Jeff Donahue (Barrelhouse Flat, the Aviary). Sporting the occasional dead animal head, the bar is cash only, with
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European
Originally Dutch-inspired, this pleasant European-style bistro and bar features a farm-to-table menu including moules frites and house-made charcuterie. There are a dozen gins and genevers, along with craft beers and craft cocktails, and the patio is dog friendly. —Kate Schmidt
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Music venue
Part storefront art installation, part eclectic music venue (and record label), mostly craft-cocktail mecca, the Whistler is a Chicago destination, forget about neighborhood spot. Just don’t let the Friday- and Saturday-night lines deter you from visiting at more reasonable hours.
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