![]() ![]() ![]() Several of the original bars were outfitted by Hollywood set designers, and though McGee's space is firmly on the tasteful Art Deco end of the tiki spectrum, it's atmospheric as hell. Among the many lessons McGee and his team have learned from tiki pioneers such as Donn Beach, Vic Bergeron, and Stephen Crane is this: always entertain. Regardless of where you sit, whether under the thatched roof at the gorgeous onyx-topped bar, giving you a view of the nearly 200 bottles of rum on the shelves, or elsewhere, you're in for quite a show. All told, between the main area, an "invite only" section in the back near the service bar, and the private Bamboo Room, the establishment has a capacity of 240. The bar alone seats around 25, and the rest of the space is filled out with cozy booths, spacious banquettes, low tables for four, and drink rails for standing customers. The hostess, wearing a dress with a slit cut halfway to Winnetka, greets you, hands you an oversized menu (complete with charming illustrations and a short history of tiki), and leads you into the main room. You walk down a short hallway to a carved host's stand it, along with a number of stand-alone tikis, the barstools, carved wood panels, hanging colored glass lamps, and more, was salvaged from Trader Vic's. At the bottom of the stairs, to the right of a large floor-standing tiki, is a bamboo-screened room designed to accommodate private parties of 20–25: leopard print seating, a black velvet painting of a topless native girl, and plenty of other evocative touches in evidence. Above the stairwell, bathed in an eerie blue light, is a wonderfully creepy pile of skulls. You immediately begin to notice the amazing interior design evident throughout. Just inside the door, the exposed brick walls morph into rounded stone blocks, and as you turn the corner you commence your descent to the basement level where the bar is located. The speakeasyish entrance for Three Dots and a Dash is in the alley at Clark and Hubbard. Exotica was more than a sound, it was design movement, and a pop art reaction to a Cold War paradigm that said all that was evil lurked barely outside our sacred borders. All this cultural production promised a world more primitive and less mediated than life in the burgeoning white collar states. It had the feel of distant places, but it took you to spots never before trekked by man. 1 acts as a perfect description: "Exotica was a round-trip ticket departing everyday for something more fabulous. Allow us to act as your tour guide and show you what we mean.īut first, what is tiki exactly? Well, if tiki had a soundtrack it would be a genre of music known as exotica so what RJ Smith writes in his liner notes for the album Ultra-Lounge, Vol. But based on our first impressions, aside from a few quibbles, we're happy to report that Three Dots and a Dash easily measures up to the classic Palmer House location of Trader Vic's (1957–2005) and then ups the ante. We're not old enough to have experienced Don the Beachcomber's old Chicago outpost on Walton. Would the pathetic mistakes of the Gold Coast Trader Vic's be avoided? Would the sometimes heavy hand of the Melman Brothers' organization spoil everything? Would the bro-tastic, celeb-friendly River North location tempt McGee into watering down the spirit of tiki? When McGee moved to Lettuce Entertain You early last year, and a hitherto unidentified "special project" was revealed to be a tiki bar, we were excited. Anyone who's been to The Whistler's bi-monthly tiki nights, which are invariably crowded with enthusiastic drinkers, knows that there's a pent up demand waiting to be met." That the newest rebirth of Chicago tiki should be a product of Paul McGee's imagination, the very mastermind who dreamed up those evenings at the Whistler, makes perfect sense. The man named a drink after this website, for crying out loud! Nevertheless, we are fanatics on the subject of tiki, so we'd like to think that our devotion to the topic gives us enough 14 carat cred to try.Īfter the debacle that was Chicago's latest Trader Vic's, we wrote, "Chicago has been slow to join the tiki-nova trend, but that could be changing soon. The main bar at Three Dots and a Dash image via FacebookA brief caveat: it's a definite challenge to be objective when it comes to Three Dots and a Dash, Paul McGee's new bar. ![]()
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