The Top 76 Places to Drink Near Gavroche

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

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.

1. World's 101 Best #15 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. Esquire Dirty Dirty · The Best Martinis in America
3. Esquire The Spanglish · The Best Martinis in America

1. VinePair Food & Beverage Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. 50 Best #27 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

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.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 3 Pins
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · World's Best Bar
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Outstanding Bar

1. Esquire Dukes Hotel Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. Central

1. 50 Best #30 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. The Banchets Winner · Bar of the Year

1. Food & Wine The Top 10 Hotel Bars in the US

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Daddy Long Legs

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. Central
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. 50 Best #65 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Bon Appétit America's Best New Bars
2. 50 Best #76 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. 50 Best #16 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Bar Team

1. 50 Best #80 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire Martini Service · The Best Martinis in America
3. Esquire Market Price Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. Central

1. Eater Best New Bar
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

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.

1. Esquire Vesper · The Best Martinis in America
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The Infatuation #9 · Chicago’s Best New Restaurants

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Esquire Martini · The Best Martinis in America

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.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. 50 Best One to Watch Award
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. Central

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. Central

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

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.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Star
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

1. The Banchets Nominee · Chef of the Year · Kevin Hickey
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Chicago Right Now

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. The Banchets Winner · Best Design
3. The Banchets Nominee · Sommelier of the Year · Kat Hawkins

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago
2. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. The Banchets Nominee · Bar of the Year

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Bar Team – U.S. Central
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Punch The Who’s Who of Beer Cool

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. Midwest Living 2023 · Best of the Midwest
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

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.

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Becca Petersen
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. The New York Times The Restaurant List

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

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.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Bar Program
2. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars In Chicago

1. Eater Chicago’s Best Speakeasies and Secret Bars

1. Esquire The Martini You Drink Before You Fly · The Best Martinis in America

1. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America