The Motel Bar in Chicago, Illinois

I've been to the Motel Bar probably 10-15 times in the last two years. Today is the first time I've left without being served. A few coworkers and myself went to the bar for a quick beer over lunch (it's Friday after all). There was one medium table - probably about five-six people - and another two at the bar. Otherwise, the place was dead. We sat down and were given menus (though we weren't there to eat) and I asked our bartender about their beers on tap. She gestured that she'd need a minute, so we sat down. The taps have no handles on them, so we couldn't figure it out on our own. We weren't given a drink menu, so again, we're in the dark. I looked down at the fridges behind the bar and they are empty, and while I've been told many times that they're out of the beer I ordered, they've never been completely empty. At this point, we started to wonder if they serve beer at all anymore. Meanwhile, the original bartender has walked by us five times or more. The other bartender (there were two), seemed to be struggling to figure out how to use his own point of sale machine, and the busser (yes, there are three, count 'em three employees) kept walking by us with dirty dishes from vacant tables. She is the only one who appeared to be working at all, and while I can't assume that she could serve us, she chose to continue bussing tables for no one instead. There are maybe ten customers in this place and she's still bussing tables like there's a line of impatient customers out the door, waving fistfuls of money at her. After five minutes of being ignored completely, we chose to leave. When we walked outside, the first bartender was smoking a cigarette and laughing at something on her phone. Very helpful. Honestly, I've never had a good experience here. The food is okay, but overpriced. The employees are unfriendly, seemingly blind, and unconcerned with your requests (my vegetarian girlfriend once ordered a salad without bacon and was served a salad with, yep you guessed it, bacon. When she asked for another, they tried scraping the bacon off and served it to her again). But, if you're like me, you might be willing to overlook it all for a quick beer. That's a hard thing to mess up, right? Wrong. They won't even bother to pretend to care about your business at The Motel Bar. If this place wasn't located directly under a bunch of corporations loaded with stressed out sales and logistics employees, it would most certainly have died years ago, and I wish it had. Save yourself some time and a spike in your blood pressure. Go somewhere, anywhere, else.

I really dislike this restaurant/bar. The service is terrible, the food is bland and unremarkable, and the prices do not compete. The only reason I justify 2 stars is that it has a very nice outdoor patio in the summer. That being said, there are plenty of other patios in the area with better prices and food that I would rather visit.