Blues Bar Mt. Prospect. Great new restaurant and bar.

Has anyone else been to the new restaurant Blues Bar in Mt. Prospect? Ive been there once with my girlfriend and had a wonderful time. Prices were reasonable and the there were some very cool drinks.
Im curious if anyone else has been there.

Welcome to LTHForum, ChefYack.

Would you care to share a little bit more about the place? What kind of food? What makes the drinks cool?

Also, your screen name suggests you're a chef....please be sure to read our Posting Guidelines, and note especially the request of restaurant professional:

Disclose any special relationship (be it owner, employee, friend, or frequent customer) you have with an establishment you're discussing. Make sure you provide enough information so that readers know where you're coming from.

I look forward to reading more of your contributions here.

Cheers,

Aaron

ChefYack wrote:Has anyone else been to the new restaurant Blues Bar in Mt. Prospect?

I haven't but my wife was and her comment to me was that it was a good thing I missed going along. Something about how miserable the food would have made my evening.

Another warm welcome from the LTH police lol! Blues Bar is a new two story construction across from Central Bakery in downtown Mt Prospect on 83. They have a reproduction of the CPD police car from the Blues Brothers in the window on the second floor. Opened last fall. No parking, no mention of any national acts performing, and generally not the right area. I'll give it another year...

Given that the last name of the chef at Blues Bar is Bryant, and the OP's email is bbryant...@gmail.com, I think Aaron's post is understandable

I was there a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night. We got there and there was a decent size crowd. The music was pretty varied and I was kind of disappointed it wasn't all just good old Blues music. Case in point, they had a great clip from the Cream reunion on the jumbo screen. When that was over the next song in the rotation was an early 80's Michael Jackson song and continued on from there. The live music that started at 10pm was very good but it seemed like we waited forever to get what should have been going when we stepped in the door. When the band did start the place really filled up.

Decent beer selection and spirits list. We ordered an appetizer and it was pretty average. I would go for the beer and the music and eat before.

My wife went a couple of weeks ago with a number of her girlfriends. What she reported to me jives with what others have said in this thread. It's a nice place to have a few drinks and listen to music. However, the food was not good and conversation is difficult given the volume of the music. None of the ladies enjoyed the bruscetta. It was so heavy on the garlic as to render it inedible. I forgot what other appetizers they had, but they were standard. I'd like to check it out one day myself. But based on my wife's review and our limited free time, I don't anticipate going there soon.

My apologies to Aaron Deacon the moderator. Ive been caught. My name is Bryant (obviously) and I recently took over as the exec. chef of Blues Bar. The previous chef had done some awful things with the menu and the food and was removed about two months after opening. We have implemented new recipes and a whole new revamped menu is due out on Thursday Feb. 7th.
Someone had posted previously that this restaurant is in the wrong place. Let me inform of what exactly is going on here. Blues Bar is the cornerstone of a redevelopment of downtown Mt. Prospect. Development deals have been made that are bringing 100 new condos and 8 new restaurants, along with a pedestrian promenade to downtown Mt. Prospect. Blues Bar is the first of these changes.
People might say Blues Bar has expensive drinks, but if you look at any restaurant/nightclub in downtown Chicago that has live entertainment, our drinks dont even come close to matching the prices of theirs.
I was a corporate chef for Marriott Hotels for a number of years and I am now taking my unique skills to this great new restaurant.
I apologize for not indicating my affliation with the restaurant. But let me tell you, the food now is outstanding!

The one thing that you'll find about LTHers is that we don't have much love for those you use our forum to shill for places in which they have a financial interest or a business relationship. The beauty of this place is that it is a haven for food lovers who can share their honest opinions about places for food and drink without having to worry that other posters are engaging in guerilla marketing tactics. The mods and other participants in this forum are quite diligent in policing that issue.

It's too bad that your original post didn't disclose your employee/employer relationship with the bar/restaurant in question. If it had, you probably would have found most of us far more open to giving your place a try than we now are.

Yelp is a place that encourages self-promotion from restaurant owners though I suspect that any independent person seeking legitimate reviews of your bar/restaurant would be offended if you tried to pass yourself off as a customer when you're actually an employee. Maybe Yelp would be a better place for you to engage in that strategy than this forum is.

You certainly won't find much appreciation for that appraoch here.

YourPalWill wrote:You certainly won't find much appreciation for that appraoch here.

That's true, but we also understand that there's pretty widespread misunderstanding from people who don't hang out here, or on other net forums, that often.

Apology accepted, Chef, thanks for clearing the air. Please also note the Professional Board is the appropriate place for people like yourself who have news to share about their business.

Good luck with your blues bar, and please, hang around and share your other thoughts about eating in Chicago.

Cheers,

Aaron

I'm glad to hear the menu has been revamped. It makes me more inclined to try this place sooner. I only wish Blue Bar's website was more informative. There is no link to any menu and no indication of what bands are playing when.

(I simply can't imagine a better handling of this situation. Outstanding moderation is just one of the factors that makes LTHForum the place it is. Keep up the incredible work!)

I checked this place out the other night (Thursday) after work, prompted by a recent article in the Daily Herald about attempts to revive that area. We're Mt. Prospect boosters, so off we went. We sat at the bar and had drinks, appetizers and main courses. We left before the live act got started.

I've got to say, they have a really nice crew of people working there and generally a very positive vibe to the place. Service was flawless. I would go there again to have drinks and appetizers, say after getting off the Metra nearby. We bumped into some friends who recommended the fried calamari, and it was indeed excellent. Lots of tentacles, which I always like to see. The main courses were fine-- my husband liked his steak a lot-- but to me, main courses at that price (lower $20s) don't go with that kind of place. Once I get into that level of price I'm going to sit down with a tablecloth and a bottle of wine and focus on the food. That's just my feeling, though, and there is nothing to stop me from just getting appetizers there.

I hope this works out. That area has been such a tough sell for so long. probably to do with the layout, terrible parking and not pedestrian-friendly at all. What were they thinking when they set that town up? Anyway, they could really use a local hangout type place and this may be a candidate.