Up until a couple months ago I had never even heard of The Hand & The Eye in Chicago. Then a couple of our friends went and came back saying it was one of the coolest nights out they’d had in years, so naturally, one of our friends did what he always does and got six tickets to celebrate another friend’s birthday. This past Saturday was the night, and after going in mostly blind, I’ve got a lot to say.
The Hand & The Eye at a Glance
- Where: 100 E Ontario St, Chicago, IL 60611 (inside the old McCormick Mansion, a block off Michigan Avenue)
- Price: $225 to $250 per person for the evening experience, which includes a $75 food and drink credit toward dinner. Dinner menu items run $12-28 for starters, $27-82 for entrees. Valet is $26.
- Vibe: Five story magic mansion, no cameras allowed inside, part dinner, part wandering magic show, part theater
- Order: Bacon wrapped dates, the TH&TE Burger
- Skip: Nothing on the menu, but temper your expectations if you’re hoping for big illusions, this leans heavy on card magic
- Good for: Birthdays, date night, celebrating with a group when you’ve got a babysitter and want something different than dinner and drinks
The website keeps the mansion itself a mystery, there are no photos of what’s actually inside beyond a few teaser shots on social media, and that’s clearly the point. The food menu, on the other hand, is posted online if you want to plan your order ahead of time, which I wish I’d done. Our tickets were for 7:30pm on Saturday, and they ask you to arrive about 15 minutes early for check-in. We got there around 7:10, snapped a few pictures outside while we still could, and headed in.
Here’s the part everyone asks about. They don’t actually take your phone. They just put an easy to remove sticker over your camera lens at check-in. You can still use your phone inside, you just can’t take pictures or video. Honestly, this small touch made the whole night better. I couldn’t imagine being in there with a hundred people snapping photos every two minutes, especially since it’s dark in most rooms and the flashes would be constant. It kept everyone actually present instead of filming the magicians.
The Mansion and the Wandering Magic
I’m not going to walk through the full night beat by beat because I don’t want to spoil the surprises, but I’ll give you a full sense of what to expect. The building itself is gorgeous, easily on par with other special occasion Chicago spots like Carriage House in terms of the “we dressed up for this” feeling. Getting there on a Saturday night just off Michigan Avenue is a little annoying with traffic, so plan for that, but the valet is easy and $26 is nothing compared to what a garage would run you for three or four hours downtown.
When you walk in they hand you an itinerary for the evening, which varies depending on which group you’re in, and then you’re released into the main lounge and bar area. Our itinerary had dinner starting at 7:50, so we had about 30 minutes to explore the main floor first. We grabbed drinks at the bar (your food and drink credit only applies at dinner, not at the lounge bars) and started wandering toward a back room a bartender recommended.
We didn’t make it far before we passed through a small library room and got pulled in by a wandering magician. We bellied up to a high top table and watched some genuinely incredible close up magic. I like to think I’ve got a decent read on how most card tricks work, but the sleight of hand from these guys made it nearly impossible to catch. I was impressed, no notes. We caught more magic at the back bar while we waited to be walked up to dinner, in a dining room that honestly felt like a small ballroom on a cruise ship, with round wall fixtures and details that gave it an almost Titanic feel. It sounds strange written out, but it worked.
Dinner: Food and Service
Levy Restaurants runs the dining program here, and it shows. 8pm is a little late for our group to sit down to dinner, so by the time we got drinks and settled in, everyone was ready to eat. Our server set the tone immediately with jokes and a full magic house patter, even though he told us he wasn’t technically allowed to show us tricks since he’s not a magician. He showed us a few things he’d picked up anyway.
Your ticket includes a $75 per person food and drink credit toward dinner, which helps, because some menu items run pricey on their own. Everything we ordered was genuinely good.
Appetizers
We started with the Bacon Wrapped Medjool Dates ($16, Nueske’s bacon, goat cheese, hot honey), the Prime Beef Carpaccio ($28, arugula, Urfa chili, Parmigiano Reggiano, Laudemio Frescobaldi olive oil), and the Yellowfin Tuna Crudo ($27, raw sliced tuna, citrus, fennel pollen, mint). We cleared every plate. The bacon wrapped dates were the best thing our table ordered all night. The bacon itself was excellent, and even though I’m not usually a goat cheese guy, the hot honey and goat cheese filling won me over. Order this one without thinking twice. The tuna crudo was fine, it tasted like a well prepared piece of tuna, but I’m not a big seafood person so it didn’t do much for me personally. The carpaccio was the same story, not bad, just not really my thing. Neither is a dish I’d steer you away from, they’re just not the star, but at $27-28 they’re not cheap ways to find that out either.
Entrees: The TH&TE Burger
Can you guess what I ordered? If you said the TH&TE Burger ($28), no onions, sauce on the side, you know me well. The menu lists it as a 7 oz Angus beef burger with charred onions, Cooper’s sharp cheese, magic sauce, and a pretzel bun, with french fries included. That explains the onions I asked to leave off, but not what showed up next to them. The menu doesn’t mention pickles anywhere, and mine still came loaded with them on the bottom bun. If you don’t want pickles, say so when you order or you’ll be picking them off like I did. Once I scraped them away, the burger itself was excellent, cooked a perfect medium rare (I usually order medium, but this converted me for the night), and it easily holds its own against other Chicago burgers I’ve written up, including the one at The Bad Apple. If you track burger quality the way I do, it’s also worth a look on SmashAtlas for how it stacks up against other builds around the city.
Normally I eat half a burger and take the rest home for lunch the next day, much to my wife’s annoyance when I don’t. This didn’t feel like the kind of place where you ask for a to go box, so I finished the whole thing, and so did everyone else at the table. My wife got the Bucatini ($29, zucchini, provolone piccante, basil) and loved it. Our friends split between the Chicago Tenderloin ($64, 8 oz center-cut filet, red watercress, bone marrow bearnaise) and the Prime Ribeye ($82, 16 oz, housemade giardiniera, horseradish creme), though I honestly can’t tell you every detail since I wasn’t allowed to take pictures to jog my memory later. The food disappeared fast either way, and yes, that ribeye is a real splurge even with the dining credit applied.
Sides
We ordered a mix of French Fries ($11, magic sauce, sea salt, though mine came free with the burger), Whipped Potatoes ($14, 50/50, chives), the Onion Brick ($16, crispy onions, smoky ranch), and the Hen of the Woods Mushroom ($16, roasted garlic, creme fraiche, garlic breadcrumbs). I stuck to the fries, which were great. I wish I could tell you about the onion brick, that’s normally one of my favorite orders anywhere, but onions and I aren’t on speaking terms these days, and with the rest of the night still ahead of us, I didn’t want to risk it.
The After Dinner Magic Shows
Once dinner wrapped, we headed to another bar to wait for our guide to walk us to our first private room. That room was intimate, about eight chairs pulled up close to a table with another ten or twelve bar height seats around the perimeter. A local Chicago magician ran us through card tricks, coin tricks, and one watch trick I genuinely still can’t explain. Everyone in the room but one person seemed floored. This felt more like a mini show, about 20 minutes of up close magic with some audience participation, choosing cards and numbers, that kind of thing. Still very cool.
From there we were walked to another bar and caught even more close up magic while we waited for The Vault, the room for our main show of the night, to open. Whoever was working that bar deserves real credit, some of what he showed us was as good as anything we saw all evening.
The Vault itself is a proper theater room, not massive, but built for two acts: an opener known for his card work, and a headliner who’s apparently a magician’s magician. Both were talented and fun to watch, but I’ve got one small gripe. There’s a lot of card magic in this show. I get that card work takes serious skill and is impressive in its own right, we just saw a lot of it in one night. I was hoping for more large scale illusions mixed in. Some of that is on our own expectations, our friends hyped this place up hard, and we’d previously had The Spellbinder perform at our New Year’s Eve party a couple years back, so the bar was already high. The headliner wasn’t all cards, and a few of his closing bits were genuinely mind blowing, but I’d have liked a bit more variety across the close up performers overall.
Is The Hand & The Eye Worth It?
Yes, if you’re looking for a night that’s different from your standard dinner reservation. Between tickets at $225 to $250 per person, dinner running us about $300 total for six people after credits and gratuity, and cocktails in the $13 to $22 range at the various bars, this can get pricey fast, up there with other Chicago splurge nights like David Burke’s Primehouse. You can bring the cost down by going lighter on food and skipping the fancy cocktails, but we like to go all in when we’ve got a babysitter lined up and friends in tow.
This isn’t going to be for everyone, and if you want a lot of big illusions over card work, temper your expectations a little. But for a birthday, anniversary, or just a night that isn’t the same three restaurants on rotation, I’d absolutely recommend it. We had a great time, and there are still a couple of tricks from that night I’m actively trying to figure out without giving in and looking it up on YouTube.
AntiFoodie Rating: 9/10
The Hand & The Eye FAQ
Does The Hand & The Eye take your phone at the door?
No. They put an easy to remove sticker over your camera lens at check-in so you can’t take photos or video inside, but you keep your phone the whole time.
How much does The Hand & The Eye cost?
Tickets for the evening experience run $225 to $250 per person, which includes a $75 food and drink credit toward dinner. Cocktails at the various bars run $13 to $22 on top of that, and valet parking is $26.
What should you order at The Hand & The Eye?
Start with the bacon wrapped dates, they were the best thing at our table. For your entree, the TH&TE Burger is the move, just tell your server if you don’t want pickles since the menu doesn’t mention them.
Is there parking at The Hand & The Eye?
There’s valet for $26, which is genuinely easier and not much more than a nearby parking garage would cost you for a three to four hour visit just off Michigan Avenue.
Is The Hand & The Eye worth it for a special occasion?
Yes. It’s pricey, but between the mansion itself, the dinner, and the mix of wandering and staged magic, it’s a genuinely different night out and a strong pick for a birthday or anniversary.
