Cody’s Public House

Esquire's 2026 Best Bars in America list is not short on craft cocktail temples and chef-driven drinking rooms, which makes Cody's Public House on West Barry Avenue a pointed inclusion: this is a Lake View corner bar where the outdoor dartboards and a regulation bocce ball court do more talking than any menu ever could. Open since 1986, it has outlasted several waves of neighborhood change by staying exactly what it is — cheap beer, board games, real darts, and a beer garden that draws a laid-back crowd when Chicago's weather allows.

The food program is deliberately low-key. Tamales are the item regulars consistently point to, and the bar's policy of letting guests bring their own food and use the grills on the premises reinforces the point: Cody's is organized around the experience of being there, not around a kitchen. Chicago Magazine critic Penny Pollack captured it plainly, calling it a "quintessential neighborhood bar," and that framing has held for decades. The bar also earned Best Darts recognition from The Official Chicago Bar Guide back in 2001, a niche credential that nonetheless signals the seriousness with which the games side of the operation is maintained.

The Esquire listing is the kind of recognition that tends to follow bars that have already earned their reputation through attrition rather than PR cycles. Cody's sits at the less-trafficked end of Lake View, away from the denser commercial strips, which keeps the crowd local and the atmosphere free of the self-conscious polish that can drain the life out of a neighborhood bar. For visitors to Chicago looking to understand what the city's bar culture looks like outside the cocktail-bar circuit, West Barry Avenue is a reasonable place to start.