33 Club

33 Club

On our way to GCM BBQ, The Wife and I stopped into the new Jerry Kleiner place (official opening is Monday). It’s big and dark wood clubby. There are some definite Kleinerian touchs: lots of red, art, grandeur.





Kleiner is very proud of his washrooms; he offered to pose in the anteroom outside the boy’s room; he’s quite a dynamic character, the kind of full of life and talk dreamer who seems to always be thinking about stuff he can do, whether it’s designing furniture or the menu.



Anyway, the “33” refers to 1933, the year Prohibition was repealed, “a new beginning,” Kleiner explained, and said he wanted to create a place where a person could have a reasonably priced drink and some decent bar snacks (many priced around $3), maybe dinner (several in the $10-15 range). Affordability is a big factor in the equation here.

All I had were a few bar snacks, a tasty little salmon on a cracker and a crab cake…and a Speakeasy, a very good summer cocktail with peaches.

33 Club
1419 N. Wells
312.644.1419

I wonder if the restaurant will be loud. It looks cavernous and I can only imagine conversations and music battling to fill the space.

The GP wrote:I wonder if the restaurant will be loud. It looks cavernous and I can only imagine conversations and music battling to fill the space.

There are a lot of hard surfaces (glass, wood, metal) but also a lot of padding (carpeting, chairs, drapery). No doubt, it's cavernous.

David Hammond wrote:No doubt, it's cavernous.

Well, of course it is. Nobody would open a place that big and not serve meat!

My understanding is that Kleiner picked 33 not just for Prohibition but also because the 14 and 19 in the address add up to 33.