Drinkin’ at Grocery Stores
My first experience with drinking at a grocery-type establishment was at a place called Sam’s Wine Bar in Chicago. It was unique in my experience…a small four-seater bar in a back corner of the store that was open rarely and at obscure hours — often as part of a particular vendor demo. If you happened to be there at the right time, however, you could enjoy a couple good glasses of whatever was offered — we managed to be there for Dom Perignon — at a good price (sometimes free) and whoever was serving could tell you a lot about it.
Sam’s was purchased and closed by what is probably Chicago’s best-known warehouse liquor store — Binny’s. This required a couple extra blocks of walking for my wife and I but the payoff was a bigger full-time bar staffed by some of the city’s best mixologists. It’s strange, at first, to pull up a stool four feet from stacks of Bud Light boxes, but the bar actually has a great view of the city skyline and, as I said, the bar-tenders are first-rate. Although they have an eclectic drink list, I never ordered from it, instead asking whoever was tending bar to make me something whiskey-themed from the large selection of bottles and potions behind him…many of them I’d never seen before or since.
The trend has since expanded beyond the liquor stores, however, and is showing up at some of the higher-end grocery stores. I had the ignoble distinction of getting plowed at a Whole Foods (pre-Jeff Bezos) in essentially the time it took my wife to get through the checkout line. I’ve had cocktails with extended family at some very nice establishments in California. I’m currently writing this at the bar at Mariano’s, which is probably my favorite grocery store bar, to date.
There are a couple Mariano’s with a couple bars in the city. I won’t identify which one I’m at and prefer because my wife fears my “readers” (by whom I assume she means herself and perhaps my Mom) might track me down. But it has a couple very friendly bar-tenders, a solid collection of beer on tap and in bottles, a nice range of wine and a starter set of liquor that will get you through all the basic cocktails. It’s set in the middle of the hot-bars and service counters, so you can walk ten feet to get an excellent pulled-pork sandwich from the meat counter or a pizza cooked-to-order in one of those big stone ovens whose lack make the home-cooked variety inevitably a disappointment (or a least a different animal). It also has a piano and live music, presumably for those who aren’t standing in line for their 11 a.m. weekday opening.
That magical hour has arrived, however, and a kindly man in black is walking my way. ‘Til next time.