Gus' Sip & Dip

Where: Chicago, USA · 51 W Hubbard St Suite 100, Chicago, IL 60654, USA

Category: bar · Price: $$ · Rating: 4.9/5 (2754 reviews)

About Gus' Sip & Dip

The first thing that hits you is the blue glow — this eerie, chlorinated light spilling from behind the bar where actual women in mermaid tails are swimming behind plate glass like some fever dream from 1959. Your bourbon arrives strong enough to strip paint, served without ceremony in a rocks glass that's seen better decades, and that's exactly right. The décor is pure mid-century kitsch cranked to eleven: tiki lamps, vinyl stools, wood paneling that smells faintly of cigarette ghosts and cheap cologne. Tourists gawk at the mermaids with their phones out while regulars nurse their drinks and barely glance up, and somehow both groups belong here equally. The whole place feels like it fell through a crack in time and landed on West Hubbard Street with its dignity intact and its prices mercifully reasonable. You don't come here for craft cocktails or small plates — you come here because a woman is doing synchronized swimming three feet from your face while Patsy Cline plays on the jukebox and nobody thinks that's weird. It's absurd, it's wonderful, and it shouldn't work, but it's been working for over six decades. Sit at the bar directly facing the tank, order whatever well liquor calls to you, and don't bother with a tab — pay as you go like a grown-up.

Tags: group, terrace, takeout, late-night

Website: https://gussipanddip.com/

Map: Open in Google Maps

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