The Violet Hour is a swanky cool cocktail lounge in Wicker Park with a unique solution to an old problem. If you put too many people in a room and give them alcohol, things get crowded and uncomfortable - fast. So what’s the solution? Brace yourself. Here it comes. Don’t fill up the room.
Yep, that’s it. The Violet Hour has a revolutionary new policy that says, We will not admit more customers than can comfortably be seated. And let me tell you something, The Violet Hour is one cool place to sit.
As you enter, you pass through three rooms. The first is all soft blues and grays draped with velvet curtains and furnished with crazy modernist chairs featuring soaring backs like something out of Alice in Wonderland. The next features a row of cozy booths lit softly by candlelight and gorgeous hardwood floors under crystal chandeliers, and the final room is a series of divans arranged around a blazing fireplace.
The classy warmth and serenity of the place is enhanced by the intimacy, held in place by the formally attired maitre ‘d, a huge, strapping black man (think Micheal Clarke Duncan of The Green Mile) who stands by the door politely making sure no one passes through the velvet curtains until someone else leaves. He also tries to keep a line from forming outside the building, which could draw attention to the place. And we wouldn’t want that.
For The Violet Hour is a speakeasy. No, not a dingy basement with bathtub gin or a cartoon version of a Capone hideout but a speakeasy as we imagine it in our dreams. Urbane, discreet, and very hush-hush. Elegant and licentious at once. A place for those in-the-know. I would post a picture of what it looks like outside but I really don’t want it getting around. I prefer to unveil it dramatically by standing in front of it and saying, “Do you see a bar around here?” Watching the looks of puzzlement, and then revealing the secret entrance.
There is no sign. No windows. Just an inconspicuous door hidden in the face of an old board up. You would never know it was there unless someone showed it to you. The covert ambiance lends it an air of elegant mystery, like something out of an Anais Nin novel, which makes it the perfect place to sample something illicit.
I’ve always wanted to try absinthe, the anise flavored spirit said to provide a “clean drunk” and “a heightened clarity of mind and vision”. The ritual of drinking absinthe adds to its fabled mystique and recalls legends of its seductive powers which, it has been said, drove Van Gogh to madness and plunged Verlaine into decadent self-indulgence. Done properly, drinking absinthe involves placing a sugar cube on a flat perforated spoon which rests on the rim of a glass. Iced water is then slowly dripped on to the sugar cube, which gradually dissolves and drips, along with the water, into the absinthe, causing the green liquor to louche into an opalescent white as the essential oils precipitate out of the alcohol. This we did, and we drank. And….
Nothing. No wild new head rush, no sudden clarity of vision. If it was a clean drunk, it was so clean I didn’t feel it. Everybody else reported the same anti-climactic result. The best thing I can say about absinthe is that it didn’t taste bad. Sure, maybe I could’ve gotten the desired effect if I’d have downed eight or nine glasses, but at ten bucks a pop, I wasn’t going to go there. On subsequent visits to Violet Hour I’ve skipped the absinthe and enjoyed their other fine liquors – and they have many.
The Violet Hour is all about the measured enjoyment of exquisitely made alcohol. The drink menu is a leather bound volume divided into sections by type: Scotch, Bourbon, Gin, Vodka, Rum, etc. Each page provides brief descriptions of 8-12 of the finest producers of each, many of them small, family-owned operations. For example, Death’s Door Gin, which is produced in Door County, Wisconsin, is so complex and redolent of juniper it makes Bombay Sapphire seem like a mere pretender. Drink after drink is like this. The liquor served at Violet Hour is the crème-del-la-crème, and naturally the preferred method of imbibing is neat or on the rocks. This is a place for sipping and savoring, not getting smashed.
In fact, The Violet Hour is actively about discouraging the wrong sorts of patrons. The posted House Rules drawing knowing smiles from grateful regulars: No Cell Phone Use in Lounge. Proper Attire Requested. No Baseball Hats. No O-Bombs, No Jager-Bombs, No Bombs of Any Type. No Budweiser, No Light Beer, No Grey Goose, No Cosmopolitans. And Finally, Please Do Not Bring Anyone to The Violet Hour That You Wouldn’t Bring to Your Mother’s House for Thanksgiving Dinner.
And to that we say, Amen.
As do others, apparently, because The Violet Hour fills up, particularly on weekends. Go before 9pm or you’ll have a long wait after that. Most cocktails are $11 and they have an interesting selection of finger food, including fried peanut butter, banana, bacon and wildflower honey sandwich on brioche, and deviled eggs with candied pork belly. The food isn’t filling and is meant merely as an complement to the drinks. Dining at The Violet Hour is missing the point. It’s not about the food; it’s about enjoying the best liquor in a cool, classy, comfortable setting.
Created by Terry Alexander, the lounge auteur who spring-boarded to success off the popular Danny’s, The Violet Hour is not just the best lounge in Wicker Park. The Violet Hour is the best lounge in Chicago, and probably the best lounge for a thousand miles in any direction.
Now good luck finding it.
The Violet Hour
1520 N. Damen Ave.
773-252-1500
Hours: Su-F 6pm-2am; Sa 6pm-3am
Features: Food, Fireplace, Regulated Seating.
Website: www.theviolethour.com
