CHIGuide
The Chicago Cocktail Delivery Guide
photo credit: Karolina Wiercigroch
There’s only one place you can drink right now: your home. And while you could make your own cocktail, the only ingredients you might have at your disposal are a wrinkled lime, snacking celery, and that bottle of cheap Prosecco you’re saving for an emergency.
So here are bars and restaurants offering cocktail pick-up and delivery. Because even though you can’t visit these places, you can still show your support (and drink something great) by ordering from them.
The Spots
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Three Dots And A Dash is selling ingredients to make their signature cocktails at home - like Mai Tais, Painkillers, Saturns, and Zombies. You also can order tiki mugs shaped like rum barrels, skulls, and various other things that are scientifically proven to make tropical drinks taste better.
Dorian’s has some very cool quarantine care kits. They come with your choice of cocktail (the “daiq pack” makes four daiquiris and comes with two tiki mugs) and a mystery record that Dorian’s picks out for you. Record player not included, but now is definitely the time to buy something off Amazon you want but don’t need.
This is a cocktail bar that’s doing a lot. For $50, they’re offering large-format cocktail kits of their specialty drinks (like the peanut butter and jelly vodka cocktail) for carryout. They’ve even compiled a playlist for you to listen to while you get drunk.
Ina Mae’s is a Southern restaurant specializing in New Orleans-inspired food. So, it’s not surprising that they have a Hurricane kit. They also have kits for Palomas, Jean Lafittes (basically a whiskey-based Mai Tai), and a few other fun drinks. Each makes about 10 cocktails and they range from $44-$50.
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Frontier is a pioneer-inspired restaurant that actually has antelope on the menu, but we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about their $20 whiskey punch cocktail kit. They also have something called Hippie Juice (it’s CBD with Kool-Aid), but we’re not here to talk about that either.
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If you want intricate, over-the-top cocktails, order from Machine. Their kits come with things like candy cages, little hammers (to break your caged drink out of cocktail jail), stemware, and all sorts of ingredients. And each kit makes about 12-16 cocktails.
Besides Italian food, Club Lucky is known for its dirty martinis. And it has a “quarantini kit,” where you get their signature vodka, “dirt”, and either stuffed olives or onions.
This spot offers several different margarita kits, like prickly pear, mango, and ones made with mezcal. You can also get a Paloma kit.
You can get all sorts of cocktails delivered from CH - including things you haven’t ordered since you were on spring break (like a Sex On The Beach). Also interesting, they’re donating bottles of Malort hand sanitizer to local hospitals, which is definitely the best use of Malort.
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Let’s face it, it’s thrilling to drink an expensive place’s fancy cocktails in your sweatpants while watching Too Hot To Handle. The Aviary is the fancy cocktail bar owned by the Alinea and Next team and gives you the chance to do this. They have several cocktail kits to-go - margarita (mezcal or tequila), Old Fashioned, espresso martini, and more. They each make about four drinks, cost $65, and they’re really, really good.
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This seafood-focused steakhouse has a few cocktail kits, including ones to make Old Fashioneds, Bloody Marys, and sangria.
We need to discuss Lawry’s incredibly thorough martini kit. Aside from a liter of vodka, it also includes martini glasses, a shaker, olive picks, and a jar filled with horseradish and some gigantic prime rib-stuffed olives. Basically, it’s a complete meal.
Tallboy is selling a margarita kit that comes with tequila, triple sec, two limes, and simple syrup. And if that sounds like your quarantined weekly shopping list, that’s perfectly fine.
This Mexican restaurant has a few different margarita kits - tequila and mezcal. Each comes with a liter of booze, a lime, and 32oz of freshly-made mix (which is good enough to drink on its own without the alcohol). That said, don’t. Because now is not the time to be a hero.
Summer House Santa Monica is also selling a variety of DIY cocktail kits, with some pretty fun sheltered-in-place inspired names. We especially like the Don’t Get On A Greyhound, and the Can’t Travel To Manhattan.
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This River North steakhouse has a bunch of cocktail kits that feel really appropriate for the kind of restaurant you go to for a giant steak - like an Old Fashioned kit, and several versions of gin and tonics.
This spot is Permanently Closed.
Parachute has a few of its signature drinks available for carryout. There are others you could choose, but we recommend the Parachute whiskey sour (you get a liter of whiskey, bottle of Sfumato, rooibos syrup, and lemons) or the Cap Corse Rouge Spritz that comes with a bottle of Raventós I Blanc, a bottle of Cap Corse Rouge, club soda, and orange.
River Roast is offering $40 cocktail kits to-go. Some have cute names - like The Snoop Dog (gin and juice) or the Don Draper (and Old Fashioned with orange juice). Some names are less fun (i.e. the Bloody Mary), especially when they’re said three times and conjure an evil spirit.
Along with sitting in a wet spot on the Red Line, going to Cafe Ba Ba Reeba for tapas and pitchers of sangria is a Chicago right of passage. While it’s going to be a while before you can actually go to the restaurant, in the meantime, you can order sangria kits (and tapas) for delivery and takeout.
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Try to get the obnoxious “bah” out of your head. OK, good. This seafood-focused spot has a long list of liquors available (from tequila to rum to vodka), along with cocktail kits to make drinks like Bloody Marys and mimosas.
