by Ellen Fox
I had probably never made a bigger fool of myself.
It was August, I was a college kid alone in Florence, everything was closed and the entire country had fled to Greece. After dinner at the Grand Hotel, I wobbled over to the bar in the Excelsior, which stares down the Grand across the Piazza Ognissanti right on the side of the Arno river. An hour later, I had hijacked the piano player and was soulfully howling out showtunes to a crowd of wealthy and amused onlookers.
It got me a couple of nice meals with a furrier from Fiesole, but I can't shake the knowledge that someone, somewhere in France, has a videotape of me slurring the words to "Memories" with my eyes squeezed shut.
Still, the experience founded my belief in the hotel bar as a place rich with the possibility of adventure, or at least humiliation. In the time it takes to swill two glasses of Bordeaux ($11) at the Omni Ambassador East's Pump Room, you can charm a divorced chiropractor into splurging for surf 'n' turf at Tavern on Rush.
But even if you're not trolling for sugar daddies, the best hotel bars to simply lounge in have a Bogart-ish mystique, and the best in town is the diamonds-and-cigar-filled Seasons bar in the Four Seasons. One night, I listen in as Paul the bartender, an eight-year veteran of Seasons from Dundalk, Ireland, sets me up with a $11.50 vial of Cambria pinot noir and chats with the polished, young couple next to me.
"We went to Europe on our honeymoon," the wife touches her husband's arm, "and I felt so ignorant. We couldn't talk Italian, we couldn't talk French." He nods attentively, for what must be the millionth time in his henpecked life, as his wife explains how funny it is that people over there refer to cigarettes as "fags."
I opt out of the fifty grams of Beluga ($140) and demolish the tiny goblets of salty almonds and pretzels instead. The Ritz-Carlton has these very same goblets, but their Greenhouse lounge in the lobby atrium is sprawling and - check out the huge center fountain and sphinx-shaped table lamps - much more Mafia-gauche. Late in the night I sip my coffee ($2.25) and watch a robust, graying couple in Elizabethan regalia retiring after a benefit of some sort.
Perhaps it's because of the huge, pink neon sign atop its building, but I'm similarly averse to the Drake. The Coq D'or is Chicago, all right - squat and sausage-fingered - which may be why I hate it. Nobody's under forty; as if they themselves had golden cocks, they proudly puff their cigars to the songs that stalwart piano man Buddy Charles plays. Here you munch peanuts, not almonds, but at least the drinks come in girthier servings than at Seasons. Further down Walton Street, at the Doubletree Hotel, there are three bars; two are in the Park Avenue Cafe, which from five to seven offers the Up-Down special with unlimited wine refills and three courses of hors d'oeuvres for $15.50. But it's Mrs. Park's Tavern, which looks like an upscale T.G.I. Fridays, that draws a good-looking, fun-loving neighborhood crowd from the Gold Coast and Streeterville.
You'll also find fresh meat, in the form of Swissair stewardesses, at the new Hotel Allegro, which pipes in non-threatening pop music and boasts an unwittingly gaudy decor. Try as it may to be trendy, it's redeemed by one perk: every day, from five to six, it hosts an absolutely free wine hour next to the concierge stand.
I never got Trader Vics's appeal until one night when a lovely Thai waitress named Noppart inadvertently handed my friends and I different drink menus. The newer version showed two lei-adorned women leaning against a rum keg in the throes of an island bacchanal. The older menu showed those very same women bare-chested and amply-endowed! By the time my friend got to the bottom of his enormous Suffering Bastard (a $6.95 rum concoction), he was poking at the menu, certain of sex acts that clearly weren't there: "Look at that guy," he pointed to one of the cartoon revelers. "He just came!"
That same night, after Mexican pizza ($9.50) and pesto chicken fingers ($6.50) at the Hyatt Regency's glassy, riverside Big Bar, which competes in size and ambience with O'Hare's United Airlines terminal, my buddies and I finished up the night intimately at Zebra Lounge in Canterbury Courts. It was there where, perhaps in the spirit of my Florentine exploit, I rose once more from behind a hat-sized martini glass littered with shrimp tails and took the mike next to pianist Ruth Allyn to croon my enduring love for the hotel bar by slobbering out "Our Love is Here to Stay."
Pump Room, Omni Ambassador East, 1301 North State, (312)266-0360
Seasons,Four Seasons 120 East Delaware, (312)649-2401
Greenhouse, Ritz-Carlton, 160 East Pearson, (312)573-5154
Coq D'or, The Drake, 140 East Walton, (312)787-2200
Park Avenue Cafe, Doubletree Hotel, 1198 East Delaware, (312)944-4414
Mrs. Park's Tavern (312)280-8882 Hotel Allegro, 171 West Randolph, (312)236-0123, ext. 114
Trader Vic's, Palmer House Hilton, 117 East Monroe, (312)917-7317
Big Bar, Hyatt Regency, 151 East Wacker, (312)565-1234
Zebra Lounge, Canterbury Courts, 1220 North State, (312)642-5140
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