Post #692342 by Ragbag Comics on Mon, Sep 2, 2013 11:26 PM

Just went to Three Dots this evening, and had a mighty fine time. Figured I'd take a couple o' minutes to give the full run-down of our experience here...

In the interest of full disclosure, my wife and I made the trek on the Red Line down to 3 Dots first about two or three weeks ago (a little over a week after they'd opened) and at about 8:30 on a Thursday night, it was an absolute hellacious mob scene... we waited to get in (no biggie) but the line outside seemed to have nothing to do with what was going on INside, and they kept sending in folks to pile on top of the people already packed five deep at the bar, spilling over into the tables. The music was fine for an open-format drive time radio station (we heard the Cure, Simon & Garfunkel, but then also Ace of Base, Biz Markee and...the Wu Tang Clan??) but it was cranked up L-O-U-D and absolutely 110% out of place. Between the blast-y out-of-place sound track and the crowd (mostly made up of stock exchange, yuppie white collar investment banker-types and overgrown frat guys... but for that I blame the neighborhood)and after waiting 1/2 an hour for a table (or a drink) we decided to get the hell out of there. The backwards hat-bro walking in and declaring "SPRING BREAK DUDE!" was the nail in the coffin for us.

But.. we went back, primarily because I've heard nothing but glowing reviews of the place, and... it's all we got within the city limits and I like to be able to get a cab or the CTA to get my ass home after a few exotic tipples.

So this time...

I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when we walked up and saw a minimal line, and then entered to an appropriate classic exotica/lounge-y soundtrack playing at an appropriate level... and it wasn't so packed with people you couldn't move. AND the folks who WERE there seemed to be less the cocaine-and-BMW crowd and more just regular people out to have a nice night.

We got a booth and secured our mugs for the new mug release party. It's a nice, unique lookin' mug, designed to look like a sea urchin, made by Tiki Farm exclusively for the place for $20 (no drink, so WITH a drink yer lookin at $33...) but as stated above, DEFINITELY watch yer bill for the automatic gratuity when buying mugs. They DID re-run our tab so we weren't paying 18% gratuity on $60 worth of mugs, but only after someone was able to track down the manager, who explained to us that it's the "policy" to include everything on one bill but they'd "do us the favor" of rerunning the tab. Ultimately all was OK, and they were pleasant enough about it. Not trying to be a cheap ass but with a $20 mug (without a drink), and $13-per-drink rounds, paying an EXTRA $11 tip for handing us 3 mugs seems like stickin' it to ya in a not so nice place. Especially when we were told if we had just walked in off the street and bought a couple mugs at the bar from the bartender directly, there's no automatic gratuity added. I get that it's a flaw in their automated system and they're still workin' the bugs out, but the way the whole thing was handled was kinda weird. Anyway... on to the meat & potatoes here...

The Drinks...

First round, I had an very good Jet Pilot, and my wife had an odd tasting Mai Tai that was nothing like the classic Vic's. With the research and props to all the drink creators of the classic drinks on the menu (and with the Mai Tai being the sole offering here from Vic's, i.e. the place where 99% of the Tiki decor for this joint came from, post Rush St.-implosion)I woulda expected the solid almond-lime-and-agricole-Mai Tai we all know and love (fortunately for us on Lake Michigan, the Foundation in Milwaukee makes a perfect one.)It wasn't just that this drink didn't taste like a Mai Tai... it just was a weird taste altogether and would not have been very good as a drink with an entirely different name, either.

The Jet Pilot I had, however, was really quite great. Weirdly, there were several Jet Pilots delivered to the table in different rounds, which all had different garnishes and came in different glassware. My 1st Jet Pilot was REALLY cinnamon-y by the end due primarily to the large cinnamon stick that came as a garnish.. the ones in the second round didn't have those and seemed far more balanced to me. Of course, I've never had the Steve Crane recipe they're using outside of the Grog Log (Mr. Crane's ventures were all long gone before I was born) but the Mai Kai's version is definitely more booze-forward, less cinnamon/spice. Regardless... it was a killer drink I'd absolutely order again.

I also tried the "Tall as a Tree and Twice as Shady" (a mouthful of a name, to be sure...) THAT was an outstanding original Scotch cocktail... mighty, mighty fine.

Also sampled the Rum River Mystic, which was another original that mixed aged Puerto Rican rum and bourbon along with some other surprises and HOT DAMN was that good! I will definitely get that all for my own bad self next visit.

Overall, it seemed like the classic drinks we had were good quality and made with high-quality ingredients (even the mai tai, while weird, was still using quality booze and fresh juice) but the originals seemed to be where it's at, based on what I tried.

All the drinks looked lovely, with plenty of garnishes, flowers and what-not jammed in them... very picture-esque.

The food...

We didn't have food, but some of the other folks in our group did... it looked and smelled great, and they definitely enjoyed it, but for what they cost, the portions seemed pretty small (4 small satay chicken skewers ran $14.)That being said, the liquor license process in Chicago is an absolute nightmare, and it's next to impossible to get one without serving food unless you take over an existing tavern, so I suspect the food here was an afterthought (I base this on my time served in the food/bar business... the kitchen here is in an odd, after-thought-y place, there were massive delays in getting the place open which is a common occurrence for any non-restaurant in Chicago, and the fact that the food menu is not included on the large drink menu, but rather a separate small piece of card stock are all tell-tale signs to me)

The decor...

The vibe of the decor is pretty minimally tiki (in my opinion.) There are some very nice, elegant touches, but it definitely FEELS like it was "designed" by someone earning a very large paycheck as an interior designer for a large company. Some of the touches discussed in previous posts, like the blue back-lit skulls, are really cool, but the little kitsch elements felt kinda out of place to me with the more chic design sensibility inside. The over-all feel is far more in line with some of Chicago's other fine high-end craft cocktail lounges (Violet Hour, Scofflaw, Sable, etc)with some carefully chosen Tiki touches, and much less like the classic Poly-pop design sense of other newer Tiki bars around the country (Frankie's, Forbidden Island, Hale Pele, etc.)

All that being said, the little touches like the swizzles (which they were mostly out of), the elaborate garnishes, and the cool menus are all more "classic Tiki bar" and less "chic cocktail lounge."

Overall..

We had a nice time... the drinks were really good, and while it ain't like Frankie's or the Tonga Hut or Forbidden Island, and the decor ain't Hala Kahiki (nor do I think it's trying to BE any of those things) and the atmosphere must make some tumultuous shifts to loud dance-y 90's party crowd on weekends/later in the evenings, it's definitely doing some things right.

Sable has outstanding cocktails (they're right up the road if you're in town visiting 3 Dots... their head man behind the stick won Bartender of the Year at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans this year...)but they are not served in shrunken heads and pineapples, there aren't any Tikis on the premises, and the odds of hearing Martin Denny come on the sound system are 0 (at 3 Dots, they seem to be about 50/50 from my experiences so far)so we will definitely come back here for our downtown-ish cocktail fix.

With a fully stocked bar at home, and after dropping almost $70 for two drinks each for the two of us, I can say financially speaking we may not be coming a LOT, but still definitely worth a visit if yr in town.

Congrats! You made it to the end of this unnecessarily lengthy post!

--Pete

[ Edited by: Ragbag Comics 2013-09-03 18:35 ]

[ Edited by: Ragbag Comics 2013-09-03 18:42 ]