Stout Barrel House and Galley

I’m new to Chicago and heard about this place hosting Badger football games on Saturday. I had a large group of friend’s in town and was worried about finding a place to watch that had food, wasn’t shoulder to shoulder and didn’t require getting there hours before the game to secure a table. They were hard to reach over the phone, but after emailing them via their website there hospitality coordinator was absolutely fantastic and got us a booth reservation.
When we arrived, it was the perfect place for eating and watching the game. They had a good number of TVs and the booth horseshoe layout around the bar still made you feel like you were part of the party. Not to mention the Bloody Mary bar was AMAZING. A bunch of mix choices and everything you could every think of to put in a bloody which was, most importantly, FRESH. Definitely not typical bar, soggy drink accessories.

The food is decent (the shrimp tacos are actually amazing)
The people… more so the bouncer and management staff are nothing short of disappointing. While I’m sure there is a lot of great staff at Stout the select few that treat people (physically and emotionally) terrible is simply not aligned with the great culture of Chicago. Grabbing someone and kicking them out for not leaving immediately after closing out their bottle service while the drinks are still full is abusive and embarrassing. On top of that, calling a female names just to be a jerk is awful. If this were a drunk/​obnoxious individual I could understand. However, with it being someone reasonable it was simply disappointing. This bar should be ashamed that they can’t tame their people and hold them accountable for their actions. All the reviews on Unilocal show we are not the only ones to have experienced this. Clearly there is a significant pattern that no business should be proud of.

Successful women please avoid this bar. My attractive female friend picked up the bill for bottle service. It made the manager feel inferior. He asked the security team to mentally and physically assault her while she was escorted into the alley. This should not be acceptable behavior and I hope the HR team reviews the staffing members with power issues.

Stout suffers from the problem of allowing some real terrible human beings to be in charge. There are certainly staff members and bartenders there who are very good at what they do, and act as consummate professionals. If you read the reviews, you’ll notice a lot of people with bad experiences with bouncers — and that’s okay to some extent, that tends to be the normal culture of River North — BUT the thing these reviews (and personal experience) have in common is the intentional cruelty with which some of these people perform their jobs. It’s the exact opposite of professionalism.
Bouncing is a tough job. You have to deal with drunk idiots, you make zero dollars, you work a crappy late-​shift schedule. It doesn’t give you the right to be verbally abusive and cruel to ANYONE. It doesn’t give you the right to hurl racial slurs, rude comments about women’s appearances, or any other insulting remarks to paying customers, or would-​be paying customers. You can make someone exit a bar, or refuse them entry to a bar, and be professional about it — or, if you work at Stout, you can have free reign to say/​do whatever you want to treat someone like they’re not even a human being, and you have the management’s approval and complicity to do so.
Please, Unilocalers, do not go to Stout. Do not fund their ability to pay people to treat patrons like dirt.

DON’T use your credit card here!!! Server/​bartender altered the tip amount AFTER I had signed the merchant copy. I contacted the office several times and was told that email was the only way I would get a response. Never received a response to my email inquiries and was forced to dispute the charge with the credit card company.
Appears the company universally endorses this type of unethical behavior (see other reviews for proof).

I will never go to this bar again! I am about 22 weeks pregnant and have back problems after standing for long periods of time. So after my group of friends and I had been sitting at the bar for almost 3 hours (them spending tons on beers and rounds of shots) the bouncer said he needed to take all of our chairs away to make more room for business. I made him aware that I was pregnant and needed to sit, he instantly made it very clear that he did not care. He claimed that if I was able to walk into the bar that I can stand. After asking to speak with the manager, it was clear that the manager, Jeff Andrews, did not care. He stated if I didn’t give up my chair that they would call the police. I have never felt so disrespected in my life. Worst customer service experience ever! If you know someone pregnant think of how upset you would feel if she was mistreated like I was.

Scene: Sunday brunch at Noon.
Friend: «Hey, can you ask if they can turn down the music a bit?
Waitress: «I can ask.»
(Music is turned up)
End Scene.
I try to give most restaurants the benefit of the doubt (every place can have a bad day, overcook a meal, etc.) but the ratings on here make it seem like this is the rule and not the exception at Stout. Best case scenario: I never have to go back. So why two stars instead of one? Because I saw Mike Dunleavy Jr. there once and I’m going to assume his taste in bars is at least as good as his ability to shoot coming off elevator door screens.

DO NOT GO HERE. This place is awful and the staff is unbelievably RUDE. The host physically pulled me out of a booth to make room for a new group of people, and threw my coat into the lost and found before I had a chance to grab it. When I was trying to find it, the bouncer was extremely rude and just kept saying my coat was not there. He kept pushing me away from my friends (who wound up sitting in another booth talking to some guys) while I was trying to ask if they had it. He finally said they had it in the lost and found, after 5 minutes of this nonsense. When I retrieved it, we went outside (I was seething, I no longer wanted to be in there!) and the bouncers out front told us we could not stand in the heated shelter to wait for our über. I couldn’t believe they would be so unkind after we spent so much money there.
I will NEVER go back here.

Stout was kind of painful to be in. We stopped by after leaving a party on our way home with some friends, and weren’t able to get a drink for about 15 minutes. As soon as we did (already had a headache from the blaring music and screaming mass of people), a girl scream-​crying at her ex-​boyfriend spilled her entire cocktail down my back. Tried to get napkins from the bar only to get shoved back by a guy who thought I was trying to cut the line. Left promptly, probably won’t return.

Nothing special about this place. The drinks are weak and not worth their value. There are a lot better places to attend. The only upside is that it is that it is relatively clean but beside that there is nothing out of the ordinary about this place.

Music is good, good volume. There wasnt a wait to get in the bar, but seating gets taken up quickly. Definitely busy on weekend nights. Great atmosphere, drinks are pretty daaamn tasty!

This place was near our hotel on a recent visit. Looked cool from the outside so we popped in for dinner.
The few positives from the visit: 1) seated promptly 2) server greeted us quickly 3) food was fast (extremely fast). 4) server was polite/​friendly (until the end; read below)
Now to the not so great:
1) The Greek Farro Salad was terrible. I was hoping for a slightly healthy option and the description sounded tasty. In actuality, it tasted like someone dumped a jar of sliced olives on top. Way too many olives, salty, briny tasting. I actually gave up after a few bites it was so bad, which I never do. Blech!
2) My cocktail was meh.
3) Flatbread was ok.
4) My husband ordered a whiskey on the rocks. There were two prices on the menu. When the bill came, we were charged the higher price which was nearly double what we expected. We asked the server why and her response was «oh, you must not be from Chicago» and explained how difference size pours were different prices. Now, call me crazy but when there are different options, a solid server would clarify what you’re ordering.
So in the end, we dropped $ 50 on one of the worst meals we’ve had. After we went to a nearby beer bar we visited before and loved to drown our sorrows. Told the bartender about our experience. She told us that pour size and pricing is up the the discretion of the bar. She showed us what they charged for a similar pour. Needless to say, it piled on the crapiness that Stout offered. My advice, skip this place and support one of the other awesome places nearby — Kerryman Irish Bar (had good happy hours prices and tasty food) or Clark Street Ale House (great price on beer flight).
In hindsight, I should have checked Unilocal reviews before going here!

Like most River North establishments, it’s fine. Decent beer selection. I had a beet salad, and the dressing was so acidic that it burned my mouth.

Great spot to grab a couple drinks or beers while watching any Chicago sports team! While notoriously known for being a late-​night bar, I prefer going here on Sundays to catch the Bears games. It has more of a laid-​back vibe, even with the DJ. They also have yummy moscow mules — a must get in my opinion. Also, they tend to have quite the selection of craft beers, and will get different seasonal items in. Their food is more elevated than your standard pub fare, and while I’ve only ever had the appetizers I would definitely recommend!

This place is really fun! I like the feeling of this bar. It’s not overly fancy, but not super casual either. It gets a bit packed on the weekend, but never to the point where it’s unbearable. I’ve come here for post-​dinner drinks, as well as for a night on the town and I have yet to be let down! I also love that this place is like a block from my apartment! I’ll probably become a regular.

Ivannne — the manager — refuses to allow anyone in that has other forms of ID outside of what is requested upon at time of entrance. I will admit to not being able to find my ID upon entering the bar /​so I looked for it — the bouncer who refused to give his name denied entrance & acceptance once I found /​there were 30 people in the bar on a Thursday which is a bigger problem.
I was trying to attend the establishment with coworker — and without verbal or physical harm. Point being — they did not welcome anyone that did not make them feel like heroes in downtown Chicago.
Let me know if you have questions about my experience.

I liked this place for a number of reasons but the staff were the big hit.
Goods: This place is massive. Could swallow up a office happy hour and a «lady of the night convention» at the same time, with a first date section to spare. That’s a good thing. The location is pretty good. Food was really good and not just for a bar, it was good. The beer menu was great too. There were some rare-​finds on the list! Worth a stop over.

Not sure why this place lacks the stars. I went in this Sunday for the bears game and I loved it. The atmosphere was great, the people were gorgeous, the staff was efficient and the drinks and food were amazing. I could eat their hummus everyday if I could. So in love!

Came here for happy hour & dinner with a friend. $ 5 Grey Goose drinks? Count me in! We started with the hummus plate… I could have ended my meal there and gone home happy (and extremely full). SO large and a variety of veggies. Potentially one of my favorite hummus plates I have ever ordered from a restaurant– who would have thought? My friend got the mac and cheese (Delicious) and I got the kale salad. I was only able to eat 2 bites because I was so full from the hummus plate … those 2 bites were good though– however I‘d probably stick to more traditional bar food again next time when I went back.
Takeaway? $ 5 drinks + hummus plate. YES PLEASE.

This place’s reviews are all over the place and isn’t somewhere I would have come had it not come highly recommended by a friend. We saw somewhere that it opened at 10am, so walked in (doors were open) at around 10:20 and after taking a seat at the bar were told they didn’t open until 10:30. We stepped out for a few minutes and did see on their website that it was 10:30 instead of 10:00, but it seemed weird that their doors were open and they appeared ready for service. I’m not sure what the big deal would have been to let us sit at the bar a few minutes early.
3.9 of my 4 stars are exclusively for the bloody mary bar, which is what we came for. I’m not sure how this place serves any food on the weekend, because if you do it right, these things are a meal in and of themselves. You choose your vodka (we got Tito’s), and they bring you a mug to go fill up and garnish with whatever you please. There are three types of bloody mix to choose from (regular, spicy, clamato), and then the craziest spread of garnishes I’d ever seen — meats, cheeses, shrimp, grilled asparagus, chopped peppers, celery, carrots, beef jerky, bacon, every kind of pickled vegetable, at least 20 different sauces and seasoning, plus more I’m probably forgetting. Epic. Oh yeah, and it was only $ 9. !!! That felt like a great deal because a place in downtown Chicago could easily get away with charging $ 15 for this.
Service was nothing special, and we were a little turned off by being turned away earlier on. I’d go back here for the bloody mary bar alone, but in the future might also seek out other spots where the service is a bit better.