|
STORIES
RELATED INFO
Chicago Shops
Chicago Wine & Groceries
|  |
 |
 |
|
Subscribe in your favorite reader using the links below. To learn more about feeds and RSS, click here.
 | |||||
|
Articles
Sections
>>
>
|
|||||
|
Cheap Bar Detectives
Monday Mar 19, 2007.
By Erin Brereton
|
|||||
| |||||
 photo: Karl Klockars
For weeks my friend Matt has been trying to remember the location of a bar he recently passed by that looked like his cocktail utopia: low-key and packed to the gills. Matt has premonitions, visions really, of our group of friends laughing, noshing and ordering multiple rounds until the bar closes. He daydreams about it. He IMs me about it.
The problem is that we can't find the place. In our short-lived, unsuccessful bar detective careers, we've hit one dusty windowed, greasy grill-bedecked bar after the next, but none of them have turned out to be the bar Matt spotted. We have, however, discovered many perfect-for-weeknight-drinking hidden gem taverns in the Loop.
My new favorite? Cardozo's Pub, 170 W. Washington Street. We can all walk there from work, and it has booths. It's located in the basement, but I don't need windows. They just charge you for windows.
Ample seating and free food are coveted commodities at a Loop tavern, so when we easily snatched a table during our first visit, Cardozo's scored major points. Before we even ordered our drinks, our eyes glommed onto the free-for-all food platters that had just come out of the kitchen: steaming pizza sitting next to a warming tray of wings and what we thought was fried cauliflower. I held myself back from leaping over the table and landing square in front of the food and instead selected a drink so I'd feel I was least paying my dues to the bar.
But needless to say, we started sampling before too long. After all, you shouldn't let fresh food go to waste. The good news: The pizza was tasty, with just-sweet-enough sauce and gently browned cheese. It burned the roof of my mouth, but in a good way.
The bad: The maybe-cauliflower simply looked too scary and unidentifiable to try. It may have been a vegetable or possibly animal brains prepared with a significant amount of oil and heat. We'll never know.
We will also never know the details regarding Cardozo's free food. Multiple sources claim that the pub serves free grub every weeknight, but the phone just rings and rings when I call. I guess frying cauliflower requires every employees' hands. All I can say for sure is that the food was there when I was.
I'll also add that unlike some eateries, which thrust out a bowl of something at 5 p.m. and leave it 'til it's licked clean (you're welcome, dish-washing staff), Cardozo's replenished the pizza after the few patrons there (ok, us included) hungrily gobbled it down.
Our drinks weren't particularly cheap but went down fine. Plus we ate dinner for free. I love pizza. I'll pay a good American dollar for that stuff. And I'll do it often. But that night? I spent not a haypenny.
When we rolled out onto the street in search of an above-ground nightcap destination, we ended up in an Irish bar in the Gold Coast. I can't remember its name, but I liked it. I might even go back…that is, if I can find my way there.
Curious about Cardozo's Pub? Pop in for a visit. It's at 170 W. Washington St., (312) 236-1573 and it's open until 9:30 p.m.
|
|||||
| |||||
