Hang zones
As a humble reminder, we’re out at a conference this week. We’ll be back the week of May 19.
Loaf Lounge is the sort of place where there should be more of it, more like it, but the work is probably terrible and the rent is probably bad and Loaf Lounge made most of its reputation off of The Bear, Chicago’s only cultural work. Loaf Lounge is a café that makes good sandwiches and better pastry, and their coffee is highly underrated since they use the best commercial roastery in the metro area, but everybody knows them for the cake, now called the Bear Cake, which is not made of bear but of chocolate. The show needed a cake; the owners consulted on it; they parlayed that success into a literal brick-and-mortar café that is less than 100 feet from my house, where the whole staff knows me, smirks when I walk in.
Loaf makes the best bread in the neighborhood & the best sandwiches in the neighborhood, and the thing they are literally known for is topped by local exercise in line-waiting Sugar Moon four blocks away. And yet they got named by a noted fascist propaganda outlet as the best bakery in America. There is an objectively better bakery within walking distance. But Loaf is an objectively better place.
Loaf Lounge is the sort of place that you want to actually hang out in. Floor-to-ceiling windows, actual tables, no line most of the time. The other day, on a Sunday at peak, I saw a line – but the seats weren’t competitive and everybody was civil. Due to the contemporary structural collapse, it’s hard finding places on the northwest side in 2025 that are the sacred quadrifecta:
Good
Vibey
Actually feasible to hang out in
Not a bar
While I’m sure there are more, I can think of five off the top of my head, in addition to Loaf Lounge. This matters since parks are never enough in the city; it’s too cold to be outside six months out of the year, and there are no public bathrooms in Chicago. You pick a place, sit there, relax.
Many things get you when you visit Europe, but the big one for me is all of the people just out there, relaxing on the street, in cafés, not being rushed along, vibing. This is of course possible in the states, but it is much harder. And it becomes even harder still when you’re constrained by the fact that a place must, in fact, be good, because you get one life and know what quality is.
Loaf Lounge works best when you care nothing about its history or its hype, strip away the artifice, and just approach it for what it is, as a resident of the neighborhood, as a person who likes food and is curious about eating it. Only then can a place reveal its true self.