Bad Apple<\/a> and a handful of other places that at least appear to be enthusiastic about our business.<\/p>\nThere were a few good things to come out of the place – a long morning spent there a couple of years ago helped me finally dial in my palate to hops and IPA’s, Goose Island’s in particular, and they made a very respectable bar pizza there as well.\u00a0 Others online dispute the staff’s friendliness but they were never anything other than fine with me, occasionally poured a free drink and were willing to track down whatever baseball game I wanted on any of their numerous flat screen TVs.\u00a0 (Speaking of which – think they’re for sale?)\u00a0 I spent part of a New Years Eve there and enjoyed watching my brother-in-law talk Thailand with the aforementioned owner due to the authentic Chang beer t-shirt he was wearing, all while he was on the receiving end of some heavy flirting from someone whose gender remains questionable.\u00a0 It wasn’t without its entertaining occasional positives.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, they were all overshadowed by a space and location that wasn’t right for what they were trying to do, compounded by not knowing what the hell they wanted to do in the first place.\u00a0 It could have been that the opening of Fountainhead was the final nail in the coffin for the Ale House, and I’m amazed that they made it 3 years in an economy that’s as terrible as it is.\u00a0 Maybe the rent is low enough that a small group of intelligent beer writers could open the doors again and do it some justice.\u00a0 Who knows – maybe we should have offered our services in the first place and helped out.\u00a0 As it is, even with all its shortcomings, the neighborhood is down one more drinking establishment that occasionally seemed to accidentally get things right – and there’s still a need for the place that the Ale House could have been.<\/p>\n
As it remains, the Ale House is no more, which is both overdue and disappointing.\u00a0 Ale House, we hardly knew ye – almost as much as ye hardly knew ye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[516,347],"yoast_head":"\n
Chicago Ale House, RIP - A Lament For the Bar That Could Have Been<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n