O’Leary’s Public House

I came in on 5÷30÷16 and asked if the kitchen was open. The bartender promptly replyed…“does it look like there are any Mexicans in the back”…Racism is not a good policy for any establishment. No one should ever go to this place

Service was great.
The burger was real damn good, especially considering the location and the price. Tasty spicy mayo on the side was a nice bonus.
Pub food at its best. Great spot to grab a drink and a bite.
Will definitely be back.

Here on Saturday, February 13, 2016. Girl bartender throwing a hissy fit to the bouncers, I sat at the bar for 30+ minutes. Here sober, purposely keeps passing me? Not entirely sure why… Other employees reassure me «don’t worry about it, she’s a BITCH»… Great, but I’d still like a drink.

Awesome Packers game day experience! Build your own Bloody Mary, incredible fried foods as an appetizer, and cheap Miller Lite on tap. So fun watching the Pack demolish the Raiders this afternoon, all is right with the world.

I visited this pub a few weeks ago for lunch and a beer. First of all they had a revolution amber ale that is very hard to find in the city. I was very impressed and the beer was great! Then I ordered a turkey melt for lunch. It was kind of weird and served on pita bread… However the owner was my server and he was extremely accommodating and sweet. I would go back again. Maybe order a salad or something more common like a burger. Great service, calm atmosphere, and good people!

My partner and I wandered into O’Leary’s Public House for a quick drink and a bite to eat before headed to a late dinner. Overall, this is definitely a dive bar, and it didn’t really smell good.
River North is full of these kinds of places — holes in the wall mixed in with his new restaurants. This place has clearly been around for a long time.
Honestly, it smelled like a wet dog in here. We almost walked out, but we just wanted to sit down and have a drink. For those purposes, O’Leary’s Public House is fine. They have a good number of beers on tap, and the prices are adequate.
The bar food is typical — fried foods galore. This place definitely isn’t a gastropub or something like that. Everything was carb-​heavy and so I didn’t bother eating anything.
The place is kind of small, and it’s not anywhere I would seek out to go.

Great little hole in the wall bar. Went there on a Friday night while visiting friends in Chicago and some of the other places had very long waits/​lines. The kitchen had just closed (I believe 11pm) so we just got some pitchers of beer.
They have a great draft selection, a jukebox which made it fun for everyone to play the music and it was constantly changing, and also the brand new 2016 Golden Tee! There is a cute little upstairs area that is pretty small and overlooks the bar. Overall, I thought this place was awesome and if I lived in Chicago I would be there all the time!

I really like this place. The food and people are very top notch. It is sort of a hidden gem in the River North area. Depending on the night, the music gets very loud, so we prefer sitting outside, but the service out there is really great.

Awesome Food (love the Alfredo and pulled pork sandwich) …
Great little neighborhood bar along with great staff!

This is more like a neighborhood bar. we had a nice evening having some good Irish drinks. The wait staff were very attentive and friendly. I was a little disappointed by the menu, I was hoping for shepherd’s pie. I had the fish and chips instead which was fine. The people with me had the Reuben and a turkey burger. Both said they liked it. I still think this is a better place to drink than to eat.

Super loud, crappy house music. Like, really dumb bad. Bartender kept turning it up so you can’t hear your conversation. Painful. Would be a great spot if not for the obnoxious music!

I went for the Packers Bears game a few Sundays ago. Just moved to Chicago in May and wanted to find a Packer Bar near my apartment if I could find one. Food and drink specials during the game were pretty good. My girlfriend and I love bar food and aren’t too hard to please but the cheese curds were just ok. Expected better. The atmosphere made my dining experience fun. Halftime and post game giveaways from the bartender which was fun! Overall, worth the short walk. If you’re high maintinance I would suggest somewhere else.

I am not really a fan of bars. When I saw the name pub, I figured it would be a true pub like the pubs that I know from England. Not so. Pub=food first, drink a close second. Bar=drinks first, food a possibility.
However, the pulled pork was tasty and the stew satisfied my hunger.
There are several screens with various sports playing on them, and the atmosphere has a cozy feel because of the small size.
I guess if I were a local and liked bars, this might be a place that I would go, earning a 4 star. But since I’m not, it gets a 3.

We stopped here for a drink before the night got started. The beer selection was decent, my fiancé wanted a quick bit so he ordered the pulled pork it was ok. If your looking for a quiet bar with no loud music, this is your place!

I was told to leave after mentioning that one of the bartenders was messed up. The bartender I mention this to agreed and said they knew. The security was pounding shots with the patrons of the establishment around the same time. When I brought this up I was asked to leave.

No specials, but $ 5 shots (that’s pretty special if you ask me)! My boyfriend and I came here after a disappointing meal down the street (GT Fish & Oyster — not worth it for restaurant week!). Chill bar and honest staff. The bartender is funny and isn’t afraid to tell you what he thinks about the different types of liquor and what you’re drinking. Nice little place. I’d come back if I were in the area.

A few months back my buddy pulled a dirty trick on me telling me to meet him here for the Bears/​Packers game. Stoked as the season had just begun, I threw on an Urlacher jersey and jolted off to O’leary’s only to find a sea of green and yellow.
We got our ass kicked that game (as usual) but I made it out of there without a scratch on me. Combine this with the fact that the food and booze are pretty cheap for River North and I guess I gotta give em’ a little love.
Still…it is a Packers bar.

Not top on my Happy Hour list, well ok, maybe it didn’t even make the list… because there is NO HAPPY HOUR! Who doesn’t have some sort of special for happy hour? Come on, that’s just being lazy with your marketing people. We stopped in here before Trivia at Bull & Bear, I wish we hadn’t.
Mike thought it smelled really bad… I thought it smelled like a bar.
They had no specials, so we decided on Blue Moon, the really amazingly friendly (sarcasm) bartender let us know that they were out… can’t you just go hook up a new keg? So we ended up settling for 2 Miller Lites… hard to screw up, so they were fine.
We finished our beers and were heading out, but when we got to the doorway there was a cloud of smoke from the staff members smoking outside of the entrance… I couldn’t find my way out, it was so scary, I didn’t know what was going to happen to me!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
We finally escaped unharmed and sober… so to Bull & Bear we went.
The only plus to this place was the fact they had Packers stuff up… big plus for me, but like I said, THE ONLY PLUS.

Ashley and I came here before our Tuesday night trivia dinner at Bull & Bear and only had one drink. We were looking for a place with a happy hour and/​or drink specials. There were only a handful of people in here and one bartender.
We sat at a table and found out that they didn’t have any specials… to put it a different way, this place was nothing special. I thought the smell was very «college bar-​ish.» It made me kind of queasy from the moment I walked in. If we wouldn’t have felt so weird about walking out after we sat down, we would have.
We both ordered a Blue Moon. The bartender went to the tap and pulled the handle… nothing came out. «We are out of Blue Moon,» she told us. Ugh, I don’t even know what we ordered. And to pile it on, we walked outside into a cloud of smoke from the workers of O’Leary’s.

You know what River North needs? More dives. No, I’m serious. More dives. I’m tired of the Moes and the Spy Bars and the Paris Clubs. But I don’t want to move to a different neighborhood because I enjoy my walk to work too much.
So thank, O’Learys, for being a nice little dive bar in the thick of it. Not really dive bar prices (hey, we are still in River North), but I can wear a ratty t-​shirt and jeans on a Saturday night and not get looked at like I just ate your first born or I have five heads.
Don’t come here thinking this is a legit Irish place – it’s not. The bathrooms are rather dirty and the place is rather dingy. But there’s a nice sidewalk seating area in the summer months, and it’s a straight up bar type of bar. Refreshing.