One Lake Brewing, Oak Park

One Lake Brewing, Oak Park

One Lake Brewing, the recently opened brewery/restaurant at the corner of Lake and Austin, is a beautiful spot, with well-designed interior space and a lot of promise – and it’s great to see such a grand old building put to such good use.

We visited on a recent Sunday, vowing to drink all the available beers – which we achieved by ordering flights; we had:

Lando, an IPA with intense grapefruit flavors, kind of like a Sauvignon Blanc. We liked it, but man, it was aggressive, very hoppy and tongue-coating. I imagine this would be good with a very fishy fish, like maybe mackerel.

Hopbrite is a pale ale, with peach on the nose and notes of tobacco, which surprisingly went very well together (kind of like John Rolfe peach brandy-flavored pipe tobacco).

Commonwealth uses a pre-Prohibition recipe from Appalachia, and tastes of dark toast, coffee and creamy chocolate, surprisingly light.

Schwartzbier is a German black beer and also a relatively lightweight sip, almost effervescent, one of the few dark beers that could be considered a session brew.

Oscar Milde is a lighter ale, and it was one of our favorites, very well-balanced, with hints of sweetness, caramel, and almost savory, licorice-like notes.

Telegraph was another favorite, though it had the highest alcohol by volume (7.1%) of the whole bunch, hints of burnt sugar, slightly bitter.

We liked all the beers, but Oscar Milde was probably our favorite.
We figured we’d try some classic bar foods to go with our beers, so we ordered the One Lake Burger, Wings, and Pickled Things. These were not the most innovative items on the menu (there were several more interesting-sounding dishes on there), but we figured it’d be good to see how these guys handled the traditional favorites.



Pickled Things were fantastic, a colorful assortment of carrot, radish, onion, cauliflower, and cucumber. These pickles can be a starter or a side, and I would recommend Pickled Things with whatever you choose for your main course.

One Lake Burger was so-so: two thin patties, rather dry (it’s hard to cook thin patties anything but well-done), with tomato jam, aioli, pickled onions, cheese and a few strands of arugula. Fries generic. Not bad, but it’s unlikely anyone comes to One Lake Brewery for the burgers (though I must admit, I saw many people ordering them).

Wings done Buffalo style were pretty good, with slightly spicy coating, crisp with bleu cheese sauce that, alas, had barely detectable blue cheese flavor. The meat was moist and tasty…but aren’t Buffalo Wings supposed to come with celery?

In the first-floor dining room, we saw many families, groups of guys, single women sitting at the bar, several couples. Overall, a welcoming place…and a really big place. Formerly a bank and a funeral parlor, this building has three floors, and there is abundant seating on each floor; with an outdoor patio at street level and on the roof, room for plenty of people.

It’s easy to imagine how One Lake Brewing (1 Lake St.) will be a local success: it’s a good space for all kinds of groups, very pleasant, with food that will probably get better and an ambitious beer program. It’s also a very cool addition to the neighborhood, which doesn’t have any other places like this.

https://onelakebrewing.com/

Good to know. Passed it the day you were there on my way to Landbirds. I will keep this on my radar screen to try when I am at my alternative location in the Berwyn/Oak Park area.

We finally got here Saturday for a full lunch, following up on drinks a couple of weeks back. I really like the Lando IPA - as mentioned in the Oak Park thread, I'd put this among the top of the genre in Chicagoland, not as sweet as some but very hoppy and bright.

The food, on the other hand, was just OK. I had the sausage sandwich, which had a lot of good points: the sausage was juicy and well cooked and the crisp pickled apple added a nice element. The sausage itself, however, was oddly lacking in flavor. My son thought the burger, "ok, not great," and my wife had the same reaction to the beet and carrot wrap, although she did like the pickled element in the carrots. The food seems slightly more ambitious than typical pub grub, and nothing was bad, so I'd go again, but not run back for the food like I would for the beer. I'm optimistic things might improve over time.

I will say the rooftop deck was nice, if a little hot and lacking shade on a late summer day. Yellowjacket season is also in full swing, which pushed some people back inside. Still, winter is coming, so we took advantage of a little vitamin D while we could.

All-in, this is a nice add to the area. We'll be back.

More reportage of One Lake Brwg., along with photographs, is in this LTHF thread.
Its chicken doesn't have to be that much better; only better than the Church's across the corner from it.