The Franklin Room - A Bar Review
I wasn't sure that whiskey bars got much better than Delilah's, but we may have discovered another whiskey den in Chicago that's every bit its match: The Franklin Room. In terms of scotch-loving cities, the Windy City stacks up against New York or Washington, DC, and anyone who's interested in trying some rare and unusual whiskies needs to take a trip out to the Midwest!
Atmosphere and Service: The Franklin Room is quite upscale, but in that late 2010s characteristic style where the servers have lots of tattoos and wear bartender's aprons and the staff has a whiskey steward (our world's equivalent of a sommelier) who curates the collection. Overall, the space is gorgeous: art deco ceilings, Roaring 20's style banquettes, a wood-paneled bar, all surrounded by wall cabinets displaying this bar's hundreds of bottles. The service could not be better, and this place seemed very popular. When we first arrived, we weren't able to even get space at the bar, and spent the first hour or two lounging at a series of small standing room only tables close to the host station. However, by the end of the night, they graciously moved us to a booth even though we were only indulging in a liquid diet.
Selection: In a word, incredible. Here are a few more: extensive, thoughtfully composed, deep, varied, and fairly country-neutral. Unlike some bars that have a laser-sharp focus on a particular category, like bourbon, The Franklin Room seemed to have a huge roster of every kind of whiskey that a person could want to try. The menu looks thick enough to warrant a middle-school reading level.
Rare Bottles: The bar was not hurting for aspirational drams either. We saw multiple bottles of Pappy Van Winkle in some of the cabinets, along with one of the most extensive collections of independently bottled scotches that we've encountered. The only bar that I've seen with a comparable attention to the independent bottlers is Jack Rose in DC, and that bar has over 3,000 expressions. As an example, just on our night here, we tried (and I'll review soon) Westland Garryana, a Gordon & MacPhail bottling of 21-year-old Old Pulteney, another Gordon & MacPhail of the same age from Glen Scotia, and a Fat Dram Highland Park with 20 long years in the cask. I haven't seen any of those bottles at any other bar in my memory, except perhaps the Westland Garryana.
Value: Here's the best part of the review. While the regular menu at The Franklin Room is quite dear, the bar has a rotating seasonal special menu of various bottles that they offer for half or less of their regular prices. Most of the expressions that we tried came from that menu on the night that we visited because the value was unsurpassed.
Unfortunately it's hard to read all of the prices on this list, but to give a few examples:
Westland Garryana 2017 ($150-200 bottle): $9 an ounce
Highland Park 20 Fat Dram ($300 1L bottle): $11 an ounce
Highland Park Fire & Ice Editions ($300-380 bottle): $11 an ounce
Laphroaig Cairdeas 2018 ($80 bottle): $6 an ounce
At those prices, some of those pours amounted to the price of the bottle, nothing more.
The greatest part is that, since this is a rotating selection, every season that we visit, we can expect to try top-shelf whiskies from different distilleries or different bottlers at these affordable rates!
***
Although we visited a month ago, I find myself wishing that we could spend National Scotch Day at The Franklin Room. This is one of the finest whiskey bars in Chicago and a bar particularly well suited to experienced hobbyists who want to try something new and unusual.