I have not yet written about a bar-experience here at this blog. Last week I was in Chicago. Visiting a major city, I look for an interesting bar to visit. For me, there was one bar in Chicago that I wanted to visit, and it was Three Dots and a Dash. I have to start with saying that while I do enjoy rum, I am not particularly experienced in rum and tiki cocktails. I am suffering from a rather poor selection of rum at the Swedish liquor stores, especially with unusual rums that are needed in many cocktails like the Lemon Hart 151 or the Hamilton 151. That said, I want to expand my palette and when there was a tiki bar that I have heard of on forums and on YouTube, there was only one thing to do, that is visiting the bar.
Located in a basement in Chicago’s River North, with the entrance in an alley, this bar will be missed if you don’t know of it. However, with google maps it is hardly possible to miss something like that. The entrance leads down to the basement where you are greeted. As you take your seat in the bar, either at a table or by the bar you will be in a rather dark place with a Polynesian theme. The staff wearing clothes fitting with the theme transports you away from the big city of Chicago to a paradise island with lots of rum and alcohol.
The menu consists of tiki cocktails and classic rum cocktails, very fitting to the theme. The tiki cocktails come in Polynesian inspired mugs and many of them contain lots of alcohol. Some of the tiki cocktails are meant to be shared among several people however there are also cocktails that are single servings. As the bar has taken an island theme there is quite a strong focus on rum, resulting in a pretty good rum selection. It is the US meaning Cuban rums are lacking apart from that there are different styles of rum categorised at the menu clearly by islands. The classic rum cocktails are cocktails that you would find in any other good cocktail bar, personally, I did not really focus on these cocktails. Lastly, if you want to try a classic cocktail with a certain rum there are many you can choose from. I would recommend a daiquiri if you would want to try a certain rum but that is only my personal preference. When ordering a daiquiri this way, the waitress seemed to be interested in my choice, upon which I received approval after she had done a straw taste of it when serving me.
If I were to criticise something about the bar, as everything is not fantastic about everything, it would be that while I was there, at a table close to where I sat, a group of three pulled out their laptops and used them for a shorter period. For me, the brightness of the screens ruins the atmosphere, as it did not affect my entire visit and it was around opening time, I cannot complain too much about that. In conclusion, this is a bar that I would highly recommend visiting if you are going to Chicago. It has
