Monday, August 31, 2026

The Top 76 Places to Drink Near Feld

  1. Rank 1. Queen Mary

    British-Inspired Cocktail Bar








  2. The checkered tile floors and art-lined stone walls make it look like a Parisian bistro that wandered into the West Loop and decided to stay. Creepies is a neighborhood French restaurant from the team behind Elske next door, with a concise menu that leans classic and slides Midwestern where it can. The vesper martini landed on Esquire's list of the best in the country, which is not nothing for a place called Creepies.




  3. Rank 11. Kumiko

    Japanese Cocktail Bar

    Julia Momosé's Japanese-inspired dining bar on West Lake holds a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar and the Spirited Awards title for World's Best Bar, which tells you something before you've even sat down. Staff in sharp black uniforms somehow manage to feel genuinely warm rather than stiff, and the tasting menu now matches the cocktail program's precision, leaning into Japanese flavors and technique. Come for the drinks, stay through dinner, and plan to linger longer than you intended.


  4. Rank 12. Bordel

    Parisian Cocktail Bar




  5. Rank 15. Best Intentions

    Midwestern Dive Bar





  6. Rank 19. Scofflaw

    Gin-Focused Cocktail Bar

    Two buildings knocked into one give Scofflaw two distinct personalities: an industrial front room with the bar counter, and a Victorian-ish back room with wingback armchairs that somehow doesn't feel ironic. It's a gin-focused cocktail bar in Logan Square that also leans dive, with craft beer and pub grub to prove it. Expect a line on weekends; they don't take reservations, and forty minutes is a reasonable opening bid.



  7. Rank 21. Dorian's

    Italian Cocktail Bar


  8. Rank 22. Asador Bastian

    Basque-inspired Steakhouse

    The Txuletón, a Basque-style ribeye from mature dairy cows, grilled over open charcoal with salt, heat, and not much else, is the organizing principle of this Basque-inspired chophouse in River North. The kitchen takes its cues from the asador tradition, applying that discipline to seriously sourced beef, carefully aged. Spanish reds anchor the wine list. Esquire named it among the best new restaurants in America, and it lands at number 15 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.



  9. Rank 24. Three Dots and a Dash

    Tiki Cocktail Bar

    You find this tiki bar by following strangers down a narrow alley off Clark Street, which is either a great sign or a terrible one depending on your instincts. A staircase descends under a wall of skulls into a big, dim basement decked out in modern tiki grandeur. The drinks are serious and the room knows it. Difford's Guide gives it five stars, and the wait on weekends is its own kind of endorsement.











  10. Rank 34. Sepia

    New American

    Exposed brick, custom tile floors, and floor-to-ceiling wine storage fill what was once a 19th-century print shop, now a Michelin-starred fine dining room in the West Loop. Chef Andrew Zimmerman folds Southeast Asian, Korean, and Mediterranean instincts into American cooking without making it a thesis. Wine Enthusiast put the cellar in its Restaurant Hall of Fame, and the room's warm enough that you'd never know you were being impressed.















  11. Rank 48. Daisies

    Italian

    Pasta and vegetables carry most of the weight here, at this bright, sun-flooded Italian restaurant in Logan Square that holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The house-made pappardelle and rigatoni keep regulars coming back, but the onion dip with house-made ruffles has become a thing people talk about. A bakery tucked in the back means the pastry situation at the end of a meal is genuinely hard to navigate. The bar program turns heads too, a James Beard semifinalist for hospitality.



  12. Rank 50. Booze Box

    Japanese Cocktail Bar



  13. Rank 52. Lost Lake

    Tiki Cocktail Bar



  14. Rank 54. Billy Sunday

    Cocktail Bar

    The back bar holds what might be the most bewildering collection of vintage Italian Fernet you'll encounter outside of Milan. Billy Sunday is a polished amaro and cocktail bar in Logan Square, narrow and dark-wooded, with green walls and vintage lamps that suggest a gentlemen's club that loosened up considerably. The bar stools fill early with people who know their bitter spirits, and the classically built cocktails give them good reason to stay.


  15. The cocktail menu runs 32 pages and opens with a table of contents, which tells you everything about how seriously this hotel bar takes its work. Originals are sorted by style; classics are filed by decade. The room holds up in daylight just as well as it does after dark, which isn't something most hotel bars can say without lying. Bring someone who likes to read before they order.


  16. The ground floor runs dark wood and dim light, with a long bar and clandestine booths; upstairs it's velvet couches and armchairs, like someone's very well-stocked living room. This Lincoln Avenue cocktail bar leans into an old-time saloon feel without making it a costume, pulling sixty-plus classics-leaning drinks organized by spirit and style. The Harry Johnson-style etchings on the menu are either charming or insufferable, depending on your mood.



  17. Rank 58. The Drifter

    Cocktail Bar

    The bar is in the basement, which is the point. The Drifter is a tiny subterranean cocktail lounge tucked beneath the Green Door Tavern, a speakeasy in the old sense of the word, not just the aesthetic. Low ceilings, dim light, and the general feeling that you've wandered somewhere you weren't supposed to find. The kind of place where a well-made drink tastes better simply because you had to descend a staircase to get it.


  18. Rank 59. Parachute HiFi

    Korean Cocktail Bar






  19. A self-described "continental tavern" that reads more like an oversized gastropub once you're inside, Hubbard Inn is a big, convivial bar in River North with a serious beer program: around twenty draught handles and nearly as many cans and bottles, skewing craft. If you came for Miller Lite, it's on the menu too, quietly listed at the bottom of the beer page, which is a very polite way to handle the situation.






  20. You ride a repurposed service elevator to reach this speakeasy-inspired rooftop cocktail bar perched atop the Rafaello Hotel. Dim lighting, dark wood, bronze fixtures, and mushroom-toned walls set a moody, upscale tone, and a resident DJ keeps the energy pointed firmly toward party. The crowd skews young and loud, so if you're after a quiet drink and a view, the elevator goes both ways.


  21. Rank 70. Bokeh

    Cocktail Bar








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Eat Score

The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

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    Drink Score

    The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

      How we score →

      Stay Score

      The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

        How we score →

        Do Score

        The score comes from the awards it's won, weighted by who gave them: a Michelin star outweighs a listicle. When you sort by what's nearby, distance changes the order, never the score.

          How we score →

          Best Place Score

          The Best Place Score rates the area around a point, not any one place. It runs on the scored places nearby: more good stuff within reach, higher score. If it looks low, we probably haven't found enough critics out here yet.