I’ve written about Big Bricks in the North Center neighborhood a few times now, but it continues to impress me every time we go back. The BBQ ribs are just incredible and I don’t say that about any food… ever. For the guy that doesn’t really like food, and only eats so he doesn’t die, to say that he can’t stop thinking about the ribs from Big Bricks means they’ve gotta be good. Or I just have terrible taste in food, which is also the case, but I know I’m not the only one that enjoyed the ribs.
Saturday night we participated in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light The Night walk downtown. A good friend of our was diagnosed with lymphoma last year and, thankfully, is now in remission. We missed the walk last year as we were out of town, but we were able to make it this year. There were 40-50 of us that came out to support him and I believe we raised over $11,000 dollars in the process. The event did supply Domino’s pizza, but that wasn’t quite enough to get us through the rest of the night so a few of us made our way over to Big Bricks for a late dinner. And as I mentioned, I got the BBQ ribs and they were amazing. They were so good in fact, that while Celeste and I had to split a full slab, Iman was able to devour an entire full slab on his own, thus impressing his girlfriend in the processes. But I don’t want to focus too much on Big Bricks this time since I’ve written about it in the past, so lets jump forward to Sunday and our Bears game experience at Old Fifth Whiskey and Pizza Bar.
Old Fifth Chicago
Liza made the suggestion a few weeks ago to hit up Chicago’s Old Fifth bar, which is located on Madison street. It’s a newer bar that focuses on Whiskey and Pizza, two things which are right up some of our alley’s, so we figured it would be a perfect place to watch the Bears game. Since there were a lot of people in town for the Light the Night walk, we decided to get there when they opened at 11 to make sure we got enough tables; it wasn’t a problem. The bar didn’t even get that crowded once the game started, but it was crowded enough to the point where they should have had at least one more server on staff.
I have to give credit to our server though. She did the best she could with what she had to work with. She had more tables than she should have, including our group of about 20, which was spread out between 2-4 tables. She did a great job despite the bar’s shortcomings. At one point the POS system went down and things were taking a bit longer than they should have. We ordered a pizza right at the start of the 1st quarter and didn’t get it until almost half time. We knew it wasn’t going to be enough for the 5 of us so we immediately put in an order for another one, which didn’t come out until almost the end of the game. Like I said, I do not blame our server at all, I think it’s more on management or the owners to realize that during the Bears game, maybe you should have a few more people on staff helping out. Not to mention the other server was spending most of his time chit-chatting with the few tables he had, when he should have been helping pick up the slack. But enough about the service, lets talk about the food.
When we first sat down we got an order of the truffle fries and stuffed tater tots. I still don’t get what the big deal is with truffle on everything, but they were alright… nothing special if you ask me. I thought the serving size was a bit small as well. The stuffed tater tot thing was actually pretty good and I didn’t think I would like it. It’s not a normal tater tot, it’s actually a Potato “tot” stuffed with Apple-wood Smoked Bacon and Reny Picot Camembert Cheese, Black Pepper Aioli. Once we started to get some more people, Celeste and Liza opted to head to the Bloody Mary Bar, which is basically a station where you can put whatever you want into a bloody mary. The waitress would bring over a glass with your choice of vodka, tequila or something else, as well as either bacon or a #meatstick (looked like a slim jim), and you would then go fill it up with tomato juice, cheese, meats, veggies, and whatever else you wanted to put in your drink. Personally I drank Vandermill Cider, as I’ve been on a cider kick recently, and Nick and Iman rocked Old Fashioned’s.
As I said above, we ordered a couple pizzas throughout the game and I thought the pizza was really good. I was quite a few drinks deep by the time the pizza came out, so I could be a bad judge of taste, but I thought it was solid thin crust pizza. Some people didn’t like how sweet the sauce was, but I actually thought that was the best part of the pizza. We did not get one of their specialty pizzas, but the normal pepperoni, mushroom and sausage did the trick. I would definitely go back to Old Fifth for food and drinks again. The bar is relatively new, and looks it. It’s very clean and very modern, they just need to work out the kinks in their iPad drive POS system and their staffing, but other than that we had a great time.
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