Delilah’s
Delilah’s ranks this high because no other dive in the city has held its character this stubbornly for this long while also running a whiskey program that would embarrass most cocktail bars.
Mike Miller opened Delilah’s in 1993 and has not softened it since. The walls are dark and covered in band posters, the music is loud and deliberately genre-spanning — punk into rockabilly into soul into whatever the DJ feels like — and the whiskey selection has grown to north of 880 bottles without ever becoming precious about it. Monday nights bring dollar beers; every night brings two or three-dollar bourbon pours from a list that would take years to exhaust.
What makes Delilah’s matter is its refusal to become ironic about itself. It is not a “craft” dive or a bar doing a dive impression; it is a functioning neighborhood institution where regulars argue about records and the staff knows the difference between a Bottled-in-Bond and a single barrel. The back room fills for film screenings and specialty tastings. Lincoln Park should not be able to produce a bar this good, but here it is.
- A $2 bourbon from the daily special board
- A pint of whatever’s on draft
- A pour from the American single malt shelf
