Sportsman’s Club

The space at Augusta and Western has been a tavern since 1989, serving working-class Ukrainian Village regulars out of a room that Heisler Hospitality took over and — crucially — did not gut. The long wooden bar dates to the 1940s. The taxidermy is original and plentiful. The booths have built-in checkerboard tables. The back patio is dog-friendly and substantial. None of it reads as curated nostalgia because none of it is.

The drink program is deliberately restrained: four or five rotating cocktails at ten dollars, seven beers on tap, an onsite amaro dispenser that sets Sportsman’s apart from almost everything else in the neighborhood. The Low Life — Miller High Life and a whiskey shot at five dollars — is the correct order on a Tuesday. Come in summer for the patio; come in winter because the room earns it.