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A View, a Bar, and Someone to Park My Car
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Bar Novo
Bar Novo, Great Street
Fun in and near The Loop should start with drinking, eating, and reasonable parking.
Bar Novo
- Whiskey Daisy: Oola Waitsburg bourbon, cherry-lavender syrup that’s made in-house, and black walnut bitters, garnished with an orange slice. If this is just a sweet Manhattan, Dita von Teese is just a stripper. Cherry partners well with bourbon – indeed, many bourbons have cherry flavor components. Cherry also partners well with sweet vermouth. Hence the typical Manhattan garnish. The walnut bitters’ astringency checks the sweetness of the cherry. I love this balanced sweetness in a Manhattan, and I often have to try to talk bartenders into hand-crafting it for me. So, the Whiskey Daisy was kind of like a bartender reading my mind.
Fantastic! For me, anyway … but any bartender who reads my mind is likely going to need therapy afterward, so I tipped big, figuring there’s no way he has the kind of healthcare that provides for mental health, because we live in a fucked-up nation full of people who regard your “problems” as not their problem. But screw them, let’s talk about drinking.
The cocktails at Novo are not just good, they’re fucking huge-ass. When do you ever get quality in quantity? Not often. Their old-fashioned glasses probably hold – I’m going to guess – twelve ounces, and the drinks come full to the brim with exactly the right amount of ice. After tossing that Manhattan back, lemme tell you, I felt fanfuckingtastic. I felt three-drink good. And when you feel that good, you should eat something. They serve a nice selection of small plates – very similar in style of cuisine to what’s served in the restaurant.
The vibe: swanky, luxurious, wood. But enough of that. I’m starving. “Shall we go through?”
Great Street
Great Street
According to Crain’s, “The food is solid. Though any criticism will slide off the place, it’s not going to win awards for excitement or innovation, either.” I agree; it’s good-if-unexciting food. The Crain’s article also mentions the view, which is indeed remarkable. Even the center of the room gets a view, via a massive skylight, through which you can gaze up at Marina City and ponder just what in the hell the floor plans must look like. Great Street’s vibe: quiet, quasi-privileged, yet informal.
Great location. A location at State and Wabash kicks Great Street straight between the goalposts, for that all-important extra point. You could easily walk from this corner to anything on the north side of the Loop (like the Chicago Theater) or the south end of the Near North (like House of Blues) without calling your high-heeled girlfriend a carriage. If you fancy someone with more sensible shoes, you’ll have no problem walking to Bank of America Theater (what kind of name is that), the Lyric, or the south end of the Mag Mile.
But wait there’s more.
If you’re having dinner at Great Street and/or drinks at Novo, you can get validated valet parking for $25. That’s pretty significant. Indeed, it’s a steal for Loop parking. Typically, you’d expect to pay something in the mid to upper 30’s or lower 40’s to park in the Loop in the evening, long enough to take in a show, for instance. Plus, if you’ve ever done so, this will be familiar: after the show, you wait with a huge crowd, freezing your ass off, standing in a slushy, muddy puddle on a dirty tile floor, listening to a robot monotonously whine, “Please insert ticket.” Afterward, you’d slowly idle your car down a winding driveway behind 100 other drivers who are in no apparent hurry whatsoever, and then you wind up being behind that one guy who suddenly can’t figure out what he did with his ticket. OK, you can do that … OR, you can sit your lovely ass down in a warm, posh, hotel lobby while a valet brings your car around. And you can pay less for it. And you can have a nice dinner. And some fantastic drinks.
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Adamus
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