Brew Bars
Ram - Schaumburg, IL
Goose Island - Chicago, IL
The Assembly - Hoffman Estates, IL
The Assembly is now one of my favorites. They have fantastic food and really really good beer.
Real Bars
Red Star - Glenview, IL
The Lumpy Pickle - Joliet, IL
The Curragh - Schaumburg, IL
The Stadium - Rolling Meadows, IL
The Curragh is one of those truly authentic "everything from Ireland" bars. Meaning that the food is terrible, but the ambience is almost stiffling.
I'm into dive bars really. I like an empty, dirty bar over a chic club. Red Star is the only treny bar on my list because they have some 200+ beers on tap. Their beer menu is at least double the size of their food menu. Apart from the 200 on draught, they have hundreds in the bottle.
The Lumpy Pickle is just a local dive that I hung out at when I lived in Joliet. They had hundreds of bottled beers and one of those "100 beer" clubs where you'd get your pic on the wall for drinking 100 different types. Most tasted like hell.
Now, The Stadium is a great place. They have the 100 beer club, but best of all they have Monster Mugs of beer. These are 36 ounce mugs of beer that cost $3.25 for a domestic. They also have dozens of micro-brews on tap and good, cheap food. The downside is that it's Lung Cancer-riffic inside. Everyone's smoking and there's no ventillation. It's greasy and dirty and dark. Sometimes they have Karaoke, sometimes they have wrestling on the TV's. They have NTN and a couple of big screens.
Fun times, fun bars.
