Hopleaf
Hopleaf sits at fifteen because no bar in Chicago has done more over a longer period to educate a city about Belgian and craft beer, and the room is still as good as it ever was.
Roper opened Hopleaf on Clark Street in 1992 when Belgian beer in America was a specialist obsession, and built a menu that over three decades has expanded to 62 taps and a bottle list that rewards long study. The Belgian section runs deep — Trappist ales, gueuze, lambics — and the American craft selection is curated with the same seriousness. The bar’s collection of Belgian glassware, each vessel shaped to its specific beer, lines the shelves with the density of a good library.
The kitchen makes the case for bar food done seriously: the CB&J — cashew butter, fig jam, raclette on a Hopleaf-baked loaf — became a cult object within the first years and has never left the menu. Mussels and frites round out a Belgian template that doesn’t condescend to either half of the equation. Multiple rooms and a patio mean it absorbs a crowd without feeling crushed. Come on a weeknight; the wait on weekends can be genuinely long.
- A Trappist ale from the Belgian draft list
- A gueuze or lambic from the bottle selection
- Whatever the rotating American craft handle is
