The Aviary
The Aviary ranks ninth rather than higher because the experience can tip from thrilling to theatrical, but when it’s working, no bar in the city is doing anything like it.
Opened in 2011 in the Alinea Group’s West Loop building, The Aviary applies the molecular gastronomy logic of Alinea to cocktails with full seriousness — specially designed glassware, multi-course drink journeys, frozen spheres that melt to reveal a drink inside. The “In the Rocks” remains one of the more conceptually coherent party tricks in American bartending: a perfectly clear ice sphere with the cocktail sealed within, broken tableside. Whether that’s a drink or a performance depends on the night.
The cocktail menu rotates with the seasons and is built with the same obsessive sourcing philosophy as Achatz’s kitchen. It is expensive, it requires a reservation most nights, and it is not the bar you go to for a casual round. But for a drink that will be the most technically ambitious thing you put in your hand this year, there is no peer in Chicago. Sit at the bar rather than a table if you can manage it.
- In the Rocks (the sphere cocktail)
- The Porthole infusion
- A five-course cocktail tasting menu
