40-somethings need great food and fun places in Chicago

Bunch of old friends meeting up in Chicago for a Cubs game this Friday. We've grown tired of the Sluggers/Cubbie Bear routine. Looking for recommendations on cool places to eat, drink and meet people in the 40 year old realm from Lakeview down to River North. Wouldn't mind throwing together a pub crawl with your ideas. Food ideas should be good values, not high end. Thanks for your thoughts.

By the way, went to Freddy's Pizza in Cicero last week based on what I read here and loved it. We'll be back many times.
And if anyone is going to Cincinnati make sre you find Terry's Turf Club, awesome burgers, coolest dive place I've been to. I'd like to find something in Chicago like that.

Mal-

You cast a pretty large net in your request. My first thought was to advise you to look at the GNR (Great Neighborhood Restaurant) map and zoom in on the desired neighborhoods for ideas. My second thought was: go to Toons. Checks many boxes for me and my friends.

Toons Bar & Grill
3857 N Southport Ave
Chicago, IL 60613
(773) 935-1919

Gingerman's was always a decent place to go before and after shows at the Metro.

3740 N. Clark.

Wiener's Circle for late night hot dogs. You'll be verbally abused by the staff and love it.

2622 N. Clark

This would require stretching the boundaries of Lakeview into North Center/Lincoln Square, but the following places are easily accessible from Wrigley and might make for a nice crawl:

Long Room
The Globe Pub
Resi's/Laschet's
Bad Apple
Carola's
Ricochet's
Brauhaus
HuettenBar

There are many other choices along the way, but your age/food/vibe/value criteria could certainly be met with this roster (based on my own experiences as a 40-something participant in a few similar post-Wrigley crawls).

Meant to add:

Completely second the votes for Gingerman an (especially) Toons!!

In my opinion, Sheffield's beer garden is worth popping into, and we often would go there after Cubs games to escape the Cubby Bear crowd. I really do not know much about their BBQ and cannot vouch for it.

Sheffield's
3258 N. Sheffield
http://sheffieldschicago.com/

I, also, highly recommend Toons.

Pretty nearby, consider The Village Tap (http://www.thevillagetap.com/ 2055 West Roscoe St.) who are running a Local Tap Takeover with Goose Island, Half Acre and many more through the weekend.

Thanks fellow crawlers! I found Toons on the GNR list and had put that on my list already. Good to get some feedback on the place. I'lll report back on what I remember from there and the others that were suggested.