There is a particular hour in Chicago, usually around ten o'clock on a Thursday in late autumn, when the city arranges itself into something almost defensible. The lakefront goes quiet, the grid exhales, and the amber-lit interiors of certain establishments promise a civility that the sidewalks do not. I have lived here for twenty years, which is nineteen years longer than I ever intended, and I have learned to accept these moments of grace without inquiring too closely into their provenance. Tonight I have hired a car. The expense guidelines suggested, in that sorrowful tone peculiar to accounting departments, that I spend no more than seventy-five dollars on transportation. The car cost three hundred and forty dollars, and I am not going to address that further.
The Copperstave — Gold Coast
The Copperstave does not advertise. It does not need to. Its mahogany is the deep, accumulated brown of old money left in good light, and its brass fixtures have been polished by the same pair of hands, Gerald's hands, since approximately the turn of the century. I do not know Gerald's surname, and he does not know mine, which is the correct relationship between a barman and a correspondent. He knows Islay from Speyside, he knows when to speak and when to let the glass do the talking, and that is sufficient.
I ordered a Laphroaig 16 and a Glenfarclas 21. The Laphroaig arrived with its medicinal smoke intact, a bonfire on a beach that someone had the decency to age properly in ex-bourbon casks. The Glenfarclas was darker, rounder, a whisky that tastes the way inherited furniture should, assuming you were fortunate enough to inherit from someone who understood wood. I took notes. The paper was crisp. My handwriting was legible. Sobriety has its uses, chief among them the ability to judge a dram without sentiment.
Rating:
- Selection and Provenance: 19/20
- Technical Execution of Pour: 18/20
- Atmosphere and Propriety: 20/20
- Value Relative to Station: 17/20
- Overall Correctness: 19/20
- Total: 93/100
Loretta's Barrel — Lincoln Park
Loretta's Barrel is what happens when Americans discover that brown liquor has a history beyond their own borders. Exposed brick, a deer head that appears to have died of ennui rather than violence, and a handwritten rye list that Todd, the barman, treats as scripture. Todd is enthusiastic. I find enthusiasm in whiskey service exhausting. It suggests a need for validation that the whiskey itself does not require, a desire to be thanked for the pour that I find unseemly.
I ordered a Michter's 10 Bourbon, which was competent in the way that American whiskey often is, straightforward and without subtext, like a man who tells you exactly what he does for a living within ninety seconds of introduction. Todd suggested a George T. Stagg. I accepted under mild duress, the duress being Todd's face, which is not a face that accepts refusal easily. The Stagg was very good, a cask-strength argument for patience and oak that I was not prepared to hear, let alone enjoy. I was annoyed, which is my resting state in Lincoln Park, and I remained so for the full duration of the glass.
Rating:
- Curation of List: 18/20
- Pour Precision and Temperature: 17/20
- General Vibe, Minus Deer: 16/20
- Value Proposition: 16/20
- Aggregate Impression: 17/20
- Total: 84/100
The Tributary — Wicker Park
The Tributary requires you to consult a clipboard. The menu arrives on one, bound with a metal clip that has been artificially distressed to suggest farmwork or maritime labor. The bartender has a waxed moustache, and I mention this only because it is impossible not to, given that it curls at the ends like a punctuation mark that has lost its sentence and refuses to admit it. I ordered something called a Smoke and Regret, which I assumed would be a punishment, a liquid lecture on the excesses of craft culture, and which turned out, infuriatingly, excellent. Artisan bitters, an expression of bourbon from a distillery that operates out of what I suspect is a repurposed garage, and a smoked ice cube that I resent having noticed, because noticing it meant admitting that it worked.
I am two drinks in now, and the evening has begun to soften at its edges, the way evenings do when you have stopped counting ounces and started counting hours. Craft cocktail culture, I should say, is where simplicity goes to die. There was an evening in 2019, in a bar not dissimilar to this one, involving a tepache reduction, a man in a vest who called himself a mixologist with no apparent irony, and a misunderstanding about the bill that I will not elaborate upon further. Some memories are best left in the clipboard, filed under regret, which this drink, despite its name, did not induce.
Rating:
- Drink Quality, Against All Expectations: 17/20
- Degree of Nonsense Tolerated: 12/20
- That Moustache, Which I Cannot Unsee: 9/20
- Ambiance and Lighting: 15/20
- Whether I Would Return Sober: 8/20
- Total: 61/100 (adjusted upward because the drink, damn it, worked)
Han Nok — Albany Park
Han Nok is clean, spare, and quietly confident in the way that good Korean bars often are, the confidence of a place that does not need to explain itself to you because it has already decided whether you are worth the effort. Jiyeon tends the stick with the economy of someone who has already calculated the exact number of seconds required for every motion, and who executes them without flourish. She poured me a GoldenBlue, which is a South Korean blended whisky, and I must pause here because I was not ready for this, not at the third stop, not while the Smoke and Regret was still making its case in my bloodstream.
Scotland has been making whisky since the fifteenth century. Korea has not. The British judges, who have historically treated world whisky as an internal British-Irish matter with occasional Japanese exceptions, filed their results in 2026 and the category is being reconsidered, which is a polite way of saying that certain assumptions have been overturned. I gave the GoldenBlue a proper nose. I took my time. I made Jiyeon wait, which she did without comment, without checking her phone, without the small sigh that indicates impatience. It is not bad. It is, I must pause here to stare at the ceiling, rather good. I have decided not to enjoy this. I am enjoying it.
Scotland spent five hundred years arriving here. Korea has perhaps fifty before they reach the same destination, and I am not going to apologize for feeling ambivalent about the maths, which favor the patient and punish the proud. Ten years ago I called Japanese whisky a novelty, and I had to eat that word cold, with a spoon, in print, which is the only way words should be eaten. India is next, and I refuse to be surprised again, though I know I will be. I will note, once, that I am calling Korean whisky by the Scottish spelling, a courtesy I extend without obligation, because tonight is full of choices I did not expect to make.
Rating:
- Correctness of General Atmosphere: 18/25
- Quality of Liquid in Glass, Absent National Prejudice: 22/25
- Sense That the Barman Is Not Judging You (Wrong): 15/25
- Whether I Am Prepared for the Future: 4/25
- Total: 59/100 (but I am revising this upward in my head, which I do not do often, because the head is where the honesty lives)
Krolczyk's — Pilsen
Krolczyk's is a corner bar in the Polish-American manner, which is to say it has linoleum that remembers the seventies and a back bar assembled over four decades by someone who cared only that the bottle pour straight and the label face forward, aesthetics be damned. The rye selection is quietly staggering. I found a Pikesville 20-Year that has no business being in Pilsen, and I say that with affection for Pilsen, which has better bars than it is credited with and worse ones than it admits.
Maureen has been here since 1998. She refilled my water glass without asking. I almost cried. I am four drinks in, and I have lost my notes for sub-category three, assuming there ever was a sub-category three. The certainty is not returning.
The Korean whisky was better than I wanted it to be, and I have been thinking about it since Albany Park. I would like to say I have moved on, but I am fifty-two, and moving on is not the skill I have cultivated. I cultivate memory, and grudges, and the occasional unexpected fondness.
IRREVERENT is scrappier than it looks, and funnier than it knows. That is not a criticism. Scrappiness is a virtue in a publication, and knowing your own humor is a kind of death, the death of surprise. Meadow is a better editor than he lets on and a worse businessman than he thinks, but he was right to back The Anvil even though it closed in 2014, because the food was correct and the timing was wrong, and I would do it again, every dish, every night, every loss. I owe him something for that, and I suppose I am paying it here, in a corner bar in Pilsen, with a water glass that never empties and a rye that understands me better than I understand myself.
The staff at the magazine, the ones who stay late and correct Esiskel's delusions and worry about the next issue as if the next issue were a living thing that requires feeding, they are the reason the words matter. You know who you are, and I am not going to name you, because naming would make it official, and I prefer to keep my affection structurally unsound, a load-bearing wall that looks like it should not work but does.
Three and a half geese.
No.
Four geese.
The Lincoln Continental pulls away from the curb on 18th Street, and the city slides past the window in its grid-like fashion, sensible and indifferent and mine in the way that cities become yours after two decades of reluctant cohabitation. Maureen refilled my water glass. The GoldenBlue was good. I am not going to make a big thing of it. Some nights you set out to confirm your prejudices, and you return with them slightly bruised, which is, I am told, the closest thing to growth available at my age. The car is very quiet. The expense report will be a separate matter, and I intend to ignore it until it goes away. I look out at the lake, dark and familiar, and I do not forgive myself for loving this city. I simply do.
-J.C.