Cafe Bong Ho

Place is closed down looking for a new tenant, was a great dive kind of place that did need some upgrading bit it’s eclectic crowd of karaōke lovers and strange DVD movies movies made the place.
I may rent it out and re open soon. Stay tuned.

I heard this place will be shutting down at the end of April, but I’m crossing my fingers that this isn’t the last review it gets.
I’m not one to frequent dive bars as I prefer lounges and speakeasy’s, however after reading the reviews about karaōke and soft-​core porn… how could I not check this place out?
Its the morning after that I’m writing this review, my throat feels like someone rubbed sandpaper on it since I was screaming my lungs out all through the night. The crowd here is very diverse and definitely welcoming to everyone, good or bad, who is brave enough to sing a few songs. There is definitely a heavy emphasis on 80’s and 90’s music but this place seems to have it all (English, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish). Although nobody seemed brave enough to sing any foreign songs…
I REALLY REALLY hope this place doesn’t close and if it does I hope it moves next to my condo in West Loop. I’ve always wanted to find a bar where a bunch of my friends would congregate on a regular basis, this would have been it!

So, reader beware– review contains adult content…
Where do I start?! Café Bong Ho (wtf that means) is an experience like no other! Next time I visit I will have to take some pics to upload. It is kind of one of those «you had to be there» kind of places. Basically the dodgiest karaōke bar I have ever been to (not that I have been to very many). The woman who was bar tending, and I’m assuming the owner as well, is super friendly and at one point in the night was actually taking shots of Soju with us.
Now for the adult part… If you are uncomfortable with watching soft core porn in public then you may be some what out of your element here (not that I’m comfortable with that, um…). Seriously, the ENTIRE time I was they were playing clips of topless women from the 90’s, wearing thongs, and dumping water on themselves, washing some car, or some other erotic activity. Not exactly my viewing preference, but definitely adds to the character and originality of the experience at Bong Ho.
All in all, definitely a fun, unique place to go for a completely random night with friends… I’d leave the parentals at home.

I love this place and it’s the best dive bar I’ve been to… EVER.
Ginny, the soft-​porn karaōke, and korean shots make this night what it is. I’ve only had amazing times here. I hear that it’s closing and I am forever sad.
Does anyone know if Café Bong Ho plans to open up somewhere else?
How will I ever get my karaōke dive-​bar fix again?

Alright… I wanted to love this place.
Like love love it… and despite the bar feeling like it was going out of it’s way to make sure I didn’t… I still did.
As far as total dive bars go this is absolute perfection.
Complete fantastical train wreck…
Seriously… even a dive bar needs a bartender that can kind of keep up and this place on a Friday couldn’t do it. We brought a good-​sized group in and we were there money in hand ready to spend but getting the woman who ran the place to get us drinks (or understand what we were saying) was a struggle and that was extremely frustrating. She’d put a «1 more minute» finger up to me which to me means «I’ve got you next» but then she’d go and serve 4 other people who walked up to the bar… while I’m standing there… I kind of almost served my own drinks… I’m patient but holy crap. Get it together.
And yet we still had a weirdly great time and I felt like I had my dive bar experience that I was craving.
And, of course, the porn in the background of the karaōke is amazing.

So the other reviews about Café Bong Ho are pretty spot on. I used to live a couple of blocks away, and ventured in one evening looking to order some Thai food (Café, right?), but when I entered through the door, I realized I had stepped not into a restaurant, but into a bar; and honestly one of the best dive bars around.
To give you a head’s up before you go — your shoes may or may not stick to the floor a little; the language barrier between you and the bartender/​owner (Ginny) is going to be somewhat of an issue, especially after she gives you free shots of Korean vodka and you realize you probably should have stopped taking shots a short time ago; you may perhaps order a Bud Light and be handed a Miller Lite, just remember the drinks here are super cheap; indeed, that is soft-​core porn playing on the television while you and your friends are innocently singing karaōke (Journey, anyone?); and finally yes, like any good dive bar there is an odor that is somewhat unfamiliar (think Simon’s Tavern down the street for a reference). There is also one pool table, that as far as I have ever seen, does not get used, but perhaps you’ll be the one to give it a try.
All in all, if you’re looking for a fun, unpretentious place to spend time with your friends to hang, chat, and sing bad karaōke — mostly after the shots have settled in — then this is the place for you. I recommend coming on Friday/​Saturday nights as it’s a bit busier, lots of neighborhood locals hang here, and everyone is super friendly and simply looking to have a good time.

All I can say is WOW! In theory this place is awesome. But being that I was sober I could not get passed the odor in the joint. I am not too certain if it was the actual place that smelled or the people that were there because some of those patrons sure looked like they needed an introduction to a razor or a bar of soap. LOVED the karaōke! I thought it was cool that people didn’t hog up the mic and actually shared. Loved the intimate feel, but I did not love the annoying rude scruffy guy that was being an ass to my friends. If he or people like him are staples of this bar I will not go back. I definitely will try to give it another shot. And yes the soft core 80’s porn definitely gave this place a little extra umph!

Ok, Ok, I know the name is really funny. I mean hilarious. Took my brother here and he had to take a picture of the sign to show everyone. And by everyone I mean his really mature friends. He also wanted to know if they had T-​shirts printed with the name on it… that is why he is my brother. We have the same sense of humor
First of all it is truly a dirty dive bar. I LOVE THAT. The floor looks like is has seen it’s share of puke. Second, they have true karaoake, it even scores you. Make sure you get all the words correct! The bartender will give you the remote control and the book and you can pick out your own songs. She also hands you the microphone so you can literally sing in your beer.
They did have a group of runners that came in all sweaty and gross when we were there and did not have the air on. They tried to turn on the air but it was still really stale and hot. The runners also had a mascot dog they allowed in the bar. That was pretty cool and that is why this bar still gets five stars.

Love the Bong Ho, can’t get enough of it. Every time I come here I have a ball. Sure, the mixed drinks are pretty watered down and limited in selection and the bathrooms are scary, but that just adds to the experience. I love the fact that sometimes my family/​friends and I have the mic to ourselves but even when there happens to be another party there, everyone is so nice and ends up pals by the end of the night.
Even though I’ll never get my husband to return (due to one very drunken night compliments of tequila shots with Ginny), I will return again and again and again.

If you’re out with a group in Andersonville, and you have a buzz and want to have a good time in a strange little place, go to Café Bong. Use their subpar karaōke system with videos of naked women playing behind the scrolling lyrics. Take complementary shots, dance and perform «Feelings» with the bartender/​owner. Try not to get mad when other groups come in to what now feels like «your bar,» takes «your karaōke book,» and dares to enjoy the karaōke system alongside you. Freeze your ass off while using the creepy bathroom. Look forward to your next visit.

One July evening, I was kidnapped by two friends. After playing Sister Mary Monistat’s trivia at Crew, we wandered up to Andersonville looking for an elusive hookah bar. Having arrived at said hookah bar, we were disappointed to see it had closed. Not to worry. We were mesmerized by the Bong Ho sign. Upon entering, we were the only people in a dark, basement like room. We ordered some drinks, and then the owner, an older Korean lady, pushed a catalogue, two microphones, and a remote to sing karaōke… and a legend was created.
The videos showed scantily clad ladies from what looked to be MTV Spring Break ’90 in Daytona Beach. A topless Carmen Electra gyrated on screen while we sang Rod Stewart’s «D’ya Think I’m Sexy». Just think you think you can’t be any more shocked… oh it’s Skinemax’s Asian ode to «Lady Marmalade». Since that night, I’ve been back a couple times and Bong Ho never disappoints. My friend Karen wants to rent the place out for her next birthday. That would be fantastic.
Just keep the beer cold and the songs coming.

This place really is as good as it gets… as good as dive bars get, that is. You can’t beat: a small «intimate» bar, with cheap beer, amazingly bad karaōke with 80’s porn as the background to the music, a friendly, funny, and generally well-​wishing older Korean lady owner/​bartender giving you and your friends free rounds of Korean vodka because you’re all having a good time, and what I think of as a nice location, kind of an escape from some of the typical bars in Andersonville… and, I’ve never noticed a bad smell. Granted both times I went the door was open with fans going, so maybe that’s the reason why, haha. Either way, I love it.
It makes me really sad that the owner is trying to sell it! Hopefully someone will buy it who intends on keeping it open. We shall see.

What a great late night dive bar. Always a great cast of drinkers to keep you entertained. I had a blast here on a Sunday Night. Get ready to get plasted on Soju.
Oh yeah thats not retro décor, thats the real deal on the walls, floor and ceilings. Go and just have fun.

I write this on a Bong Ho hangover. That’s not literal, because two room temperature Heinekens are not enough to really give you a hangover. The real culprit is the mix of creepy and fun the Bong Ho seems to bring out.
I’ve been here twice. I did not have enough to drink beforehand the first time I went. My group of friends and I were the only people in here, except for the two bartenders and a couple grizzly looking regulars who sat at the opposite end of the bar. The first experience was bland and yuck. I did not want to come again, ever. The place smells, the drinks are warm (though, they’re cheap) and the karaōke is not very good. I had written this place off as a one time bad experience.
I have purposefully avoided this place, but my friends love to go all the time. They’ll tell me «We’re going to Bong Ho!» and I take that as my cue to stay home and watch Saturday Night Live. I was convinced to go again this weekend and I had a much better time. I think the key factors of a good Bong Ho experience are 1. Drink before you go there, so you don’t notice the smell as much and 2. Have very low expectations.
The place is still kind of gross (have I mentioned that it smells weird? It smells very weird) and the bathrooms are creepy. But the bartender is kooky (her solos in Korean are very entertaining), you’ll actually get to sing some karaōke (though the sound is really bad) and you never know what kind of weirdo you’ll get to encounter. Last night there was a really drunk guy who took his shirt off half the time and spent a good part of the night humping bar stools. And half the people there.
Bong Ho can be enjoyable, just know what kind of a train wreck you’re getting yourself into.

Okay, a friend told me that this was a great place to do Karaōke and suggested we celebrate my birthday here.
I don’t know why everyone on Unilocal is so darn negative about Café Bong Ho, I had a fantastic time there! Yes, it is a dive, but it is an extremely FRIENDLY dive.
If you want to sing Karaōke, have a few drinks and hang out with your friends, it is a an excellent choice. What makes it great is that it is NOT crowded, which is great if you are a first time Karaōke singer. (My boyfriend greatly appreciated this fact, as a Karaōke novice.)
Now, I had read so many bad reviews of this bar on Unilocal,that before inviting my friends out to celebrate my birthday there, I went in on a Monday night to check it out. When I arrived, I had the bar to myself. The owner showed me how to work the machine and I drank a ($ 3)shot of shoju (Korean vodka with fresh lime squeezed into it.). I looked through the book and sang a few songs to test the karaōke machine. I left, confident that it would be a good, inexpensive place to hang with my friends on the weekend.
On Friday, I and my boyfriend came into the bar. It was more brightly lit and both the owner and bartender were behind the bar. Me and my friends had the bar mostly to ourselves, but later on some other people came in and did some tunes as well. (The levels on the karaōke machine were better balanced than on Monday.) Since it was my birthday, the owner poured us all a shot of Shoju, on the house! She even took a turn at the microphone, with her traditional rendering of «Feelings». She remembered one of the songs I had done on Monday and asked me to sing it for her.
My boyfriend, who had never done Karaōke before, sang for the first time and really enjoyed the whole experience. He mentioned as we were driving home that he was glad we’d found a local place to take our friends to when we felt like going out.
So, to address other concerns raised by prior reviewers:
1) Okay, they don’ t have beer on tap or a wine list. Don’t expect blender drinks. Think shots and bottled beer. However, for the north side, I thought the prices were pretty reasonable.
2) FREE KARAOKE!!! The owner and bartender were friendly and extremely nice about showing us how to use the karaōke machine/​remote control (which is labeled in mostly in Korean, but has text buttons in both Korean and English) and making sure everyone in the bar got a chance to sing. The remote control allows one to search by song title or artist. (The song book is organized by song title only. And yes, there is a larger selection of songs in Korean than in English.) The videos that accompany the song lyrics have NOTHING to do with the song, but can make for some interesting/​bizzare contrast.
3) The smell… When I went in on Monday night, I noticed the bar smelled faintly of incense (the kind that has camphor in it). It was pleasant (not at all like dead fish, like some people have said). I didn’t notice any smell on Friday night, but I was wearing perfume. One of my friends commented on an odor when she came but it didn’t seem to affect anyone significantly.
4) The bathroom. It’s FINE. It was clean, well lit and not at all disgusting.
So, if you want to have your own private karaōke session and not break the bank doing it, this is the place to go! Don’t let the negative reviews here on Unilocal scare you off, go check it out for YOURSELF.

Walked in and immediately walked out. The smell was that bad.
Looked like an interesting place though.

Returned to investigate.
Smelled like dead fish.
My buddy was walked in on as he used the bathroom, and the guy stayed in the bathroom to wash his hands. Strange behavior.
The karaōke seems to have changed. I tried ‘Forgot about Dre.’ It was fast and very hard. Good fun though.
In the end, we stayed as long as we could stand the smell, as long as we could find a crappy karaōke song to sing.
But seriously, it wasn’t the kind of smell that nostrils get used to. I may never come back here. Who knows, I might change my mind in a week. I’d like to think of it as a retirement, from a place. Now, I may come out of my Bong Ho retirement.
Just don’t hold your breath, unless you decide to go back to bong ho. Then it would be okay to hold your breath. Because it smells.

Oh, Café Bong Ho. You delight and totally scare me at the same time.
I’ve been once before to enjoy some cheap drinks, amuse myself and my crowd with my drunken singing skills (at least I know my voice goes downhill) and had a great time. Maybe that time I was too tipsy to notice how absolutely GROSS the bathroom is. Sitting on the pot, I was almost certain I’d see a mouse crawl by to the nearest hole in the molding. Ewwww.
Otherwise, Bong Ho is a pretty fun time. The bartenders are nice, and it seems customary to give the Asian lady owner a hug on the way out, and the translated karaōke with waterfalls in the background pretty much puts this place over the top.
Somehow I just can’t shake that bathroom, though. :shiver:

SO… a gay guy, a puerto rican, a jew, an african american, and a fat chick walk into a bar…
Ha ha… sounds funny right?
Not so much.
The Asian woman (who I am assuming was the owner) made it very clear she didn’t want us in her bar Friday night. She said we were bad for business. She said, «people will see people like you in here, take one look and leave.»
Ummm, what business? When we got there only two other people were in the place.
The group of people she thought was going to ‘scare’ business away consisted of five people in their early — mid 30’s — all professionals… dressed like average Rogers Park /​Andersonville bar hoppers.
I’m not kidding.
The poor bartender was sweet as can be and seemed horrified at what was going on.
Oh, and karaōke people, this was the worst place ever. There is no 50 foot cord. It’s a ‘do it yourself’ operation. It’s basically the same program you can buy at home where it scores you. You select the music and use the remote control to start it.
Not kidding again.
I’d love to see that little bigot out of business. Of all neighborhoods to worry about what people will say when they see a melting pot of ethnic, sexual, and religious people hanging out! Andersonville? Really?

Café Bong — though it may technically be named «Café Bong Ho» — is small, run down, a little gross and kind of pathetic and I hope, selfishly, that it never gains a wide reputation as «The Newest, Coolest Dive Bar.»
No, the beauty of this hole-​in-​the-​wall is that it’s seemingly known to only a few… and I hope it stays that way.
Located about one block north of Bryn Mawr on the west side of Clark Street, Café Bong is easy to miss. The sign hanging over the sidewalk gives the impression the place is a cheap Korean restaurant. There are no large picture windows here for passersby to peak in. Instead, the façade is nondescript, bricked up save for a small, rectangular window at eye-​level or higher.
Nothing about the outside indicates this is one whacky dive bar.
Everything on the inside screams dive — A few tall tables, about 18 — 20 seats at the long, dusty bar, a slightly under-​sized pool table, no real decorations to speak of and bathrooms that make using the alley seem appealing.
Walk into The Bong unprepared and you’re likely to turn right around and go elsewhere… unless you know it’s secret appeal.
Now would be a good time for most of you to stop reading. Unilocal!lists a lot of great bars in neighborhoods all over Chicago and beyond, so go and enter the term «great dive bar» in the search box above and start searching. Stop reading this right now. No, really, stop reading, this place isn’t for you, so good luck in your search.
Now that the majority of people are gone and are hopefully drinking further north in Edgewater or maybe even up in Roger’s Park, I’ll share with those of you smart enough not to be fooled by my attempt at mis-​direction the real appeal of Café Bong (Ho).
First, there’s nobody there. On several occasions, my friends and I have been the only customers in the place except for a few, literally two or three, regulars who looked like they probably just got done working in the kitchen of one of the area restaurants.
Our first time visiting Café Bong it was actually these guys who served us our very cheap cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon — not that we normally drink PBR, but it was on special and it matched the ambiance perfectly — because the bartender who also claims to be the owner, was way too «over served» to serve us. We loved this. We’re all restaurant and bar people too and each of us has, at one time or another, had to step in and help out a favorite bartender who was too drunk to do his or her job.
I say the bartender «claims» to also own the place because I «think» that’s what she says, but frankly, between her heavy accent and slurred speech, she’s a little difficult to understand. But, she’s always smiling, always looks glad to see us, opens up a jar of peanuts and pours them into a bowl and at some point in the evening she buys a round of shots for the house.
These aren’t always the best shots. She drinks Tequila Rose, a disgusting concoction, but last time she made some type of cherry shot. Still, it’s the thought that counts.
Still here? OK, then I’ll let you in on another secret about this place. It has a karaōke machine with a 50 foot cord.
I don’t karaōke. I’m the guy who watches as his friends who are singers get up there and do their thing, but at Café Bong and really only at Café Bong, I’ll grab the mic and belt out an off-​key rendition of anything Nirvana.
On our last visit, there was another small group of friends (not related to our group) already there when we arrived. We looked each other up and down, but kept our distance. It was like one of those «dance off» movies or «Roll Bounce» where one group of friends tries to out skate the other group of friends for control of the rink. It was our best singers versus their best.
That didn’t last long. Soon, the two groups were mingling, sharing the mic, doing duets and even joining together to do an «All Sing» where everyone in the place had to sing Queen’s «Bohemian Rhapsody.»
A girl from the other group did a hysterical version of «My Funny Valentine» while slithering all over the pool table.
And, the karaōke itself is hysterical. I’m guessing the CD’s they use are bootlegs from overseas, probably Korea as the bartender/​owner always sings some sad sounding Korean song, badly, but with a ton of emotion.
While the songs are familiar, they sound like they were recorded in someone’s basement. And the video that plays behind the words look like random shots from stolen vacation video.
Pigeons eating breadcrumbs in Rome backup Karen Carpenter. Ocean tides pounding the shore provide the backdrop for Kansas’ «Dust In The Wind.» Watching which video ends up backing up which song can prove most entertaining.
To appreciate Café Bong requires an open mind, a laid back attitude and the ability to find beauty in the absurd. Actors, artists, writers will love this place. Non-​creative types will hate it.