This is the 2nd of a multi-part post on Coffee and Free Wi-Fi in Lincoln Park, with critical forays into places to lunch. For a complete listing of the Lincoln Park cafés and restaurants miLam has reviewed, click here.
In this post, we’ll talk about a fantastic independent café with great food, and a sandwich shop that caught our attention.
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Coffee and Wi-Fi in Lincoln Park
Log On, Chicago. Edition II/ii
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Bourgeois Pig
(5 / 5)
Pros
- Ambiance galore
- Almost the best coffee in Chicago (the best is at Ch’ava)
- The strangest, quirkiest, coolest layout of any café I know.
Cons
- On weekends at mid-day, it can be prohibitively crowded. That it’s so fucking cool is no secret.
WIFI: No complaints
Can you work or study here? Yes. Along with lots of other funky people.
Plugs: You might have to do some finagling, but yes
Public Restroom: Pre-war, but functional
I suggest you make Bourgeois Pig your go-to café. This is not the sort of coffee vendor you’ll find inhabiting a mall or tucked inside a Target, near the cash registers. If that’s what you’re after, stick with kick-in-a-can or perk-in-a-pod. Instead, Pig is an example of what defines most great coffee houses: an ability to suggest that the very space itself called the café into being. Pig seems organic and unplanned. It’s quirky. In fact, its layout takes a few minutes to understand. The place has two halves, east (coffee) and west (food). You can’t get from one to the other without walking out on to the front stoop. The coffee side has seating upstairs – several small, seemingly private rooms that have the feel of an opium den. The raw, funky décor is what you’d expect of an insider’s college hideout. It’s a cool place to go if you want no one to find you, which leaves you to immerse yourself in your work. The coffee is fanfuckingtastic. They do several flavors of pour-overs. And their cappuccinos are so transcendent that the baristas are only allowed to make them within a few hours of their last confession. And oh, I should mention, they have lots of tea.
Nearby: DePaul; whatever. There’s a great-looking Irish pub not far from Pig. It looks like a fun place to get drunk. Perhaps that last sentence was redundant.
Hungry?
Fat Sandwich
(4.5 / 5)
Pig has lots of really good food. But if you’re looking for something that claims to “carry only the best brands,” and then lists Cheez Whiz and Krispy Kreme as two of them, look no further than Fat Sandwich.
Fat Sandwich Company: Who the hell thought up these sandwiches? They’re fucking insane! Fucking insanely fantastic!! I love this place, even though it can’t possibly be good for me. I just had beef (the kind you get on a Philly cheesesteak), Cheez Whiz, deep-fried cheese sticks, deep-fried chicken fingers, and French fries … on a sandwich. Yes, I had all of that on a bun. They call it the “Fat F”, and I loved it. If eating were merely a function of love, I’d’ve shoved it down my throat without bothering to chew, but eating is also a matter of nutrition, sadly. My metabolism requires about as much energy as a typical TV remote; no need to connect it directly to a nuclear reactor. It took everything in me to keep from finishing the Fat F. I wolfed down the side of fries, ate about a quarter of the sandwich, and took the rest home. It was hard to do – it’s still hard … all of that deliciousness continues to beckon, its siren call unhindered by the thick, cold walls of my refrigerator. I need to get my mind off that sandwich.
6/12/14, 11:45 A
Coffee, Free WIFI: Lincoln Park, Chicago
Lincoln Park is easily accessible by bus, Divvy, or the Red Line.
Other places to log on: Archer Heights, Boystown, Fulton River District, Gold Coast, Ravenswood, Rogers Park, West Loop, Uptown
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