This is a joint you'd walk by without even knowing it's there. But once inside you'll delight in a comfortable, expansive, divey yet clean German-Old English hodgepodge of a place with lots of beer varieties and decent pub food, including a long list of burgers. In business since 1969, Monk's is a no-nonsense peanut-shells-on-the-floor kind of bar where downtown workers blow off steam during the week amid shelves of old books and wooden barrels in the rafters.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Chicago 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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