Chicago has a new haunt for beer lover’s in the North Center neighborhood, the Bad Apple. Doing their best to take their place among Chicago heavy hitters like Kuma’s, Small Bar and the Map Room, Bad Apple tries to mix an educated collection of draught and bottled beers with tasty, beer friendly – and often beer prepared – food, and the Bad Apple succeeds more often than misses.
I’ve been to Bad Apple twice now. The first was last Friday before Matt and I went to the 5th Annual Festiv-Ale at the new Half Acre Brewery and, speaking frankly, it was a pretty disappointing experience. I had read some extremely positive reviews on both BeerAdvocate and Yelp, making some pretty great claims about both the beer programming and the food. Excited to try a new bar in town we ducked in for a pre-Festiv-Ale drink.
The first thing I was struck by is that Bad Apple is clearly not a bar. It has a bar, but it is definitely a restaurant with a bar in it. Now, whether the owners would admit this or not is not immediately clear to me as it seems they haven’t totally made up their mind on this. When you walk in the front door the first thing you see is a bar – low hanging red globed lights, an exposed brick wall and several flatscreen tvs – opposite the bar is about a half-dozen high-sitting tables with stools. They’ve worked the hardest on this first of three rooms. It’s clean, modern, and trying a bit too hard. The room seems to be designed to reflect well off shiny shirts and waxed chests. Not my cup of macho, but it is forgivable.
Unfortunately, the other rooms – the back room and a side game room – have been given much less consideration. Strange layout and cheap furniture force you to take a second look at the front room undoing the rather thin veneer of pretense and paint that may have first fooled you. Bad Apple is just not a warm place, it looks like it might have been decorated by a forty-something day trader redecorating his “man cave” after a divorce. No personality, but a tangible, uncomfortable ache to be liked. But by who?
Our interaction with the staff on our first visit was pretty negative, too. Two of the three people we interacted with were rude even as we went out of our way to be friendly. Fortunately, last night, on my second visit, our waiter was much different. Friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable he helped make me want to repeat our experience.
One last negative thing and then I’ll stop focusing on the Bad part of this Bad Apple. The music has been pretty terrible both times I’ve been in there. After enjoying our beers for about 20 minutes last night all the sudden the pretty crummy sound system in the game room started blatting out the Austin Powers theme song – no shit. At first I thought some douchebag’s cellphone was going off, but it slowly became obvious that this was coming out of bars speakers. The rest of the night was a mix of 80′s and dub. Bad Apple could go a long way in bringing in someone with musical taste to help them design their sound system as well as their audio programming. With the vibe they seem to be going for they might want to consider hiring a DJ or two to spin some tasteful, down-tempo beats and help them out with their paper-thin monitors.
Ok, the upswing of Bad Apple? Two things. Two very important things. They’ve got a great beer selection. Last night, if I can remember correctly, they had Left Hand Milk-Stout, Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold, Two Brother’s Heavy Handed, Founder’s exceptional IPA, Goose Island’s Matilda, Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter, Karmaleit Triple, New Holland’s Really Delicious and Surprising Charkoota Ale, One of New Belgium’s Lips of Faith series, and several others I can’t recall. They had Surly Cynic the first visit there, but, even without Cynic last night, they had their bases well covered. Bad Apple offers a beer menu, which, in itself is great, with all of their beers well described with region, tastes, and ABV listed.
The other upswing? The food we had was amazing. We started with their Montreal Poutine. If you read this blog at all you know I’m apey about Poutine. As far as I know there is only one other establishment in Chicago where you can get Poutine, Small Bar. Small Bar serves their Poutine with a shift away from the traditional faire, they replace the brown gravy with a sausage gravy. It’s an amazing twist on the classic dish, so I was curious to see if Bad Apple would follow that lead or go the traditional brown gravy path. I was happy to discover Bad Apple went with the brown gravy, and it was an amazing brown gravy. Seriously, it was so good my wife and I sat there rubbing our fingers through the remaining gravy doing brown gravy nummies until the waiter came and took the smudged plate away from us. There is a distinct flavor to this brown gravy, but I can’t peg it for the life of me. It may just be a gang of garlic and salt, but I think it’s something else. There is a flavor in that gravy that I’ve only noticed in thai dishes previously and it works amazingly. And it goes exceptionally well with the Charkoota Rye.
For our main course we took the strong recommendation from our waiter and had the Slow Burn burger. Chili peppers and garlic sauteed throughout the day on top of a bacon and white chedder hand packed patty and cooked to order. The only time I really notice the grade of meat in a burger is when it’s exceptionally good or terribly bad and the Slow Burn definitely made me take notice. The bun and burger literally melted in my mouth and, coupled with the delicious pepper saute, covered my mouth in a delicious, subtle, but thorough coat of easy warmth that hung around several minutes after each delicious bite of the burger went down. Slow Burn is an incredibly appropriate name for this burger. Masterfully made to have heat, but deliver it gently over time and with surprising sustain, dip this wonderful little beast in a just a dab of the table mustard and sit back and let your taste buds find their tone. I can safely say this burger is the best I’ve been able to enjoy here in Chicago and, believe me, I have had a king’s ransom of burgers. I’ll say that again: Bad Apple’s Slow Burn is the best designed burger I have enjoyed in Chicago to date. And kudo’s to our server for recognizing the brilliance of this burger and being able to read his guest’s well enough to know to recommend it.
Ah yes. We also got our hand cut fries covered in truffle oil. Mother of Pete, if you ever make your way to the Bad Apple, and, despite said drawbacks, I really think you should, you must have your french fries covered in truffle oil. It’s like an extra $.75 or something menial, but the deep flavor of the truffle just pops on the crispy fries and is an ideal compliment to the burger. I have heard a lot of good things about duck fries, though I have yet to try them. I’d be willing to bet they couldn’t be any better than the truffle oil fries I had last night.
So there you have it. Chicago’s Bad Apple, it’s not without it’s flaws, but it’s upswing makes passable the bummer atmosphere. If they could get their aesthetic a bit warmer, find comfort in a personality, and lose that offensively dumb apple with the mohawk they could have a really fantastic place. Until then, I will be visiting again to try the goat cheese fondue and their Ebel Weiss ham and swiss, but if they could get their comfort level up they might not ever be able to get me to leave.
Oh, hey, guys, get a freaking website too, eh?
Seriously???