The Elysian made no small plans and unquestionably stirred men’s souls. Balsan elevates hotel drinking to a new level of gourmet and if they perform with their food even a fraction as well then we salute them.

We arrived at 7PM for a few drinks and appetizers. We had no reservations and would have been happy anywhere there was room for 5. In the world of trendy hotel bars, such poor planning can be treated 2 ways: Like a club or like a hotel.  The former method involves cavalier disdain or even denied entry (exhibit A: The Mondrian West Hollywood) or the latter (Sunset Tower WeHo) – two polar opposites of one another located in the same neighborhood, on the same strip and presumably competing for the same dollars. Case studies like the Mondrian are few in Chicago but not null (read: W Lakeshore) and if ever there was a hotel to capitalized on its hype and step into snooty shoes the Elysian was it. It didn’t.

The Elysian staff is there to help. Sometimes comically so. A small army of valets rushes your vehicle as you make the elaborate arc around the largest parking courtyard the city has ever seen. For $23/hour they could vacuum it too or something. There is someone waiting to intercept you at the door to help with directions. He/she is not overbearing if you seem to know where you’re going. At Balsan, the hosts sadly informed us that all the tables were, in fact, reserved (none were taken). But the bar was perhaps the better choice. Let us reserve full analysis until after the first full meal but the high-level overview is excellent.

The drinks are priced correctly for Rush Street and perhaps even underpriced. Why? Because they do love them so. I watched as each of the Night/Day Cocktails received 4-5 ingredients and an average 5 minutes of bartender attention. It was great but this certainly won’t scale. 5 more people at the bar would quickly overwhelm the bartenders. To reduce the demand price such drinks at $18 and not 12. The manager told me that they do not use mixers and even make their own tonic. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, I thought, don’t cheap out on the prep work after the first month. No one is gonna wait 10 minutes for a vodka-tonic.

Independent of my prophesies, what we had we loved. Stay tuned for the full review after we get a chance to eat here.

In Atlas Shrugged, the men of the mind go on strike against the world, relinquishing their positions of power and taking up unassuming tasks like cooking. I am convinced that John Galt cooks for Silver Palm.

Considering the proximity, (well within stumbling distance) many an evening has ended at either Silver Palm or its famous sister: the Matchbox. Unfortunately, by these hours, food is no longer being served and no evening starting at these places ever ends well. But a great shame it is to have a meal at Silver Palm and not dedicate every sober neuron to its memory. So today, I put myself on a 5-martini limit and focused on the food.

The City of Chicago, like most metropolitan babysitters, dealt the Matchbox and the Silver Palm a blow by banning indoor smoking. Not being a ciggy-sucker, I do value coming home and not smelling like an ashtray. But there are some places where the thick cloud of airborne tar is an improvement upon decades of booze and smoke oozing from the crevices. So a newcomer might even be forgiven for inhaling the setting and not indulging his appetite. I hope to change that.

What sort of bar menu proudly boasts a duck club sandwich? Jumbo shrimp? A Triple-pig sandwich with pickled green tomatoes? Or even a deep-fried avocado salad? Most bars would never dream of such items simply because their customers would have nightmares about ordering them. But here, the doubters get a giant middle finger. Success is the best comeback and oh how delicious success is. In the 6 years of its existence, never once have I had anything but perfection grace my plate and never once has dinner for 2 cost more than the price of a Gibson’s entrée. The love of food and attention to detail shine through every meal as though I was sitting in Dagny Taggart’s private rail car with John Galt himself in the kitchen cooking in pots of Rearden metal. My only regret is not remembering every one of them.

The best thing about the Bull and Bear is not the creative bull-horn and bear-print logo, nor the under-dressed, over-fed waitresses nor even the beer-tap at the table. It is the consistency and value of its food. Although the table-tap is pretty ingenious and whoever takes the next step by offering table-side catheterization should win a Nobel Prize.

This afternoon, we were treated to an onion soup (the French kind, as the menu helpfully clarifies), a market salad, and the trio of Philly mini-sandwiches (not that mini) for less than the cost of a Gibson’s entrée. And the best part? The soup actually came before the entrees! This is not nit-picky. There have been an uncanny number of meals where the hot-liquid course has either come simultaneously with the main, after it, or not at all. We always say: “we’re going to start with …” to make it as unambiguous as possible without being rude. No matter. Over 50% of meals find the soup timed incorrectly. So points to the big mammal bar for getting it right.

Now, all that remains it to get it great.

Onions should be caramelized before being thrown into the soup and if the croc is not put into a hot oven before coming to the table, the cheese just ends up gooey instead of deliciously burnt. When the soup costs $9 (same as Bistro Zinc) these steps had better be taken.

More than balancing out the soup is the 12oz. bloody mary for $5. Perfectly spicy and with that seasoned salt on the rim that I love to watch people lick at while trying to look sexy. The mini-Phillies were great too and so was the market salad. Only, what the sam-hill is a “market” salad? There’s no market anywhere around here and if there were, I’m not sure its produce would be thawed in time to still be fresh. But overall, the terrific lunch was so filling that I didn’t even need my little tiny 4PM snack of Portillo’s hot dog, beef and fries. A rare bonus.

Q: Who adds $13.61 to $121.00 and gets $134.65? A: Idiots and Fulton Lounge. I’m never surprised at human error given how our classrooms have been hemorrhaging arithmetic for decades but this is a mainstream restaurant-management software program. A glorified calculator designed to remove the necessity of thought from those who spend more time memorizing their lines than helping their customers. How many times have you seen a calculator make a mistake unless you fat-fingered something during data-entry? So what explains this? An error of .04 is far too large to be explained by rounding error no matter how much precision is used to store floating-point decimals. I don’t get it and don’t like it at all.

All the more reason to step up the fight against the practice of bringing a single-line charge slip in lieu of an itemized receipt. No I don’t trust your math. See exhibit A.