Harrigan’s: Night Cheese

We’ve moved!  Read our review of Harrigan’s trivia night at http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-hearts-trivia/2010/02/review-wednesday-night-trivia-at-harrigans.html.

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Celtic Crown: Gertrude: The Oldest Woman in the World

Bad news, folks.  Remember DJ Mike?  Well, he no longer works for Quizzo, and can no longer be found in all his DJ glory at trivia hot spots Celtic Crown and Full Shilling.  We discovered this sad fact at our last trip to Celtic Crown, where DJ Mike has been replaced by someone calling himself “Jim,” although it must be noted that he does appear as “DJDammitJim” on his Quizzo bio.  (Are all Quizzo hosts required to refer to themselves as DJs?)  DJ Mike, you will be missed, especially your ginormous DJ mixer, your reading glasses and clip-on lamp, your slight (and endearing) awkwardness, and your love for women with long hair.  We wish you the best of luck in future endeavors.  And if you ever get back into trivia hosting, let us know.  We’ll be there for your triumphant return.

Despite our predisposition against Jim, he actually turned out to be pretty cool.  He’s different from DJ Mike: he uses a laptop and he seems very at ease with trivia hosting.  We actually could find nothing wrong with him, and believe us, we looked. 

Wednesday night specials include $2.75 Harp drafts, $12 domestic beer machines (we recommend PBR), half-price cocktails with Jack Daniels, 3 Olives Vodka, Smirnoff, or Bacardi, and the kicker: $5.99 Shepherd’s Pie.  We have been spoiled with ridiculously cheap burgers for the last month or so, so we were not terribly impressed with the food special.  However: free popcorn!

 

Celtic Crown trivia is brought to you by Quizzo, so it follows the same format as Full Shilling, Joker round and all.  It’s been a while since we’ve had a good name-that-tune round and last night’s did not disappoint.  Any music round that includes “Mr. Wendal” is a winner in our book.  The handout round featuring famous mustachioed gentlemen looked hard at first, but we pretty much cleaned up because one of our team members was unexpectedly familiar with ‘staches such as this one:

We ended with a *perfect* final round (oh yeah), with the final question requiring us to name all ten movies that originated as Saturday Night Live skits.  Try to name them all!  Still, that only put us in third place behind perennial trivia juggernauts, the Baracktobers, who celebrated something like their 12,352nd consecutive win (and $25 Celtic Crown tab) this week.  Overall, it’s not the same without DJ Mike, but we enjoyed trivia night at Celtic Crown.

And, in case you were wondering, the famous animated mustache above belongs to none other than Snidely Whiplash, archvillain to Dudley Do-Right of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.  Who knew?

Oh, that’s right…we did.

Celtic Crown Public House
4301 N Western Ave, Chicago
8pm to about 11pm (new 7:45 start time as of January 21)
Free admission
3 paws (out of 4)

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Rebel: the Pecan Sandies

Prompted by a tip on our blog from trivia MC Jeremy, we went to Rebel in Wrigleyville for our Wednesday night trivia outing.  For those of you who are paying attention, yes, this was our second trivia excursion of the week and no, we are not at all ashamed of that.

As far as specials go, Rebel might be the best deal in town.   Wednesday nights burgers and fries are just $2 and buckets of Miller and Coors Lite are $12.  We actually ate them before we could take pictures of them for the blog, so you’ll have to trust us that these aren’t the puny burgers you’d expect for $2–they’re a decent size with plenty of fries or tots and definitely worth trying.

As far as hosts go, Rebel’s also got something to boast about.  Jeremy (pictured below) is awesome, and not just because he reads our blog (although I’m not going to lie, that does get him bonus points).  He’s friendly, helpful, and keeps the trivia moving at a good pace.  He started right on time at 8pm and we were out the door before 10pm.  He’s also got an amazing knowledge of Berry Chill.  We’ve been pretty critical of trivia hosts in the past, so I think our enthusiasm for Jeremy says a lot.

There were 5 rounds of trivia: movies, TV, sports, general knowledge, and a really cool handout round which required us to match photos of jerseys with the player who wore it.  Thanks to our sports expert (incidentally the only guy on our team tonight) we cleaned up that round.   One cool aspect of this trivia night is that the host comes prepared with more than 5 categories and lets teams select which ones we’ll do next.  We chose TV–which proved to be a bad decision.  We’re pretty talented when it comes to Seinfeld, Simpsons, and JJ Abrams, but who knew Hill Street Blues was so popular?  In fact, who knows anything about Hill Street Blues at all?

We came in second place <applause> and  along with the first and third place teams, we won gift certificates to Rebel and Berry Chill.  Even without the $10 gift certificate (that’s 5 burgers!) we’d definitely come back.  Good trivia, cheap food, beer served in buckets.  That’s incentive enough for us.

Rebel Bar and Grill
3462 N Clark St., Chicago
Free Admission
8pm to 9:45pm
3 paws (out of 4)

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Cinners: the Pecan Sandies

Cinners, a cozy place in what barely qualifies as Lincoln Square, bills itself as a “a sexy lounge in Chicago serving Cincinnati chili, cinful drinks and lots of smiles.”  I don’t know if any place that serves copious amounts of chili should claim to be sexy, but Cinners does have a certain appeal.  Especially if you are looking for something a little different for your weekly trivia night.

Cinners specializes in Cincinnati style chili– on hot dogs, on nachos, on pasta.  You can read more about Cincinnati style chili on their website, but we didn’t find it to be that extraordinary.  We were impressed, however, with their prices.  Wednesday nights Schlitz beers are $2 and so are the nachos.   The non-special food and drinks are all pretty cheap.  It’s not a particularly imaginative menu–most of the items involved chili + cheese–but we all happily enjoyed chili cheese coneys for just $3 a piece.

The highlight of the night (for this blogger at least) was the Miller High Life I ordered.  Because Miller High Life is “the champagne of beers,” Cinners gives anyone who orders a 24 ounce bottle a champagne flute to drink it in.  If you’ve never imbibed a cheap beer in a champagne flute whilst downing a loaded chili cheese dog, you haven’t truly lived.

The really cool part about Cinners is that it’s all music trivia.  It’s supposed to start at 8pm on Wednesdays, but last night it didn’t start until 8:45.  We were a bit irked until we realized that trivia at Cinners is fast-paced and quick.  Despite the late start we were out the door by 9:45.

Trivia consists of two rounds.  First, we had 20 random music trivia questions.  Hint: the MC admits that he often includes a question about Bjork, so study up on your Icelandic trivia.  The theme of the second round was: bands that used to be cool until they came out with this song.  The MC played a brief audio clip and we had to name the title and the artist.  We disputed the notion that some of these bands (ahem, Meatloaf) are no longer cool, but we still found it to be a really fun round.  We are actually in the midst of making a CD mix based on the fabulously cheesy songs from this round.

We had mixed feelings about the night.  It started late and some teammates bemoaned the lack of questions about prog rock.  But it’s hard to complain about cheap food, cheap beer, and cheesy rock music, so overall we give it thumbs up.

Another great thing about Cinners?  We came in second place.  Talk about living the High Life.

Cinners
4757 N. Talman Ave., Chicago
8ish to 9:45
Free Admission
3 paws (out of 4)

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Local Option: Hamster on a Piano

UPDATE June 2009: Local Option trivia has moved to Flounder’s Bar & Grill.

For this week’s second trivia event, we headed to Local Option at 1102 W. Webster.  Our last visit here was unsatisfying due to the music round (disco music).  This time around, we were informed that the music round would be 90s music, which had all of our hopes up.  Trivia is advertised to start at 8 pm, and there were only a few tables left at 7:45.  One of the downsides to this trivia venue is the total absence of any sort of drink or food special.  They have an excellent variety of beers on draft, but they are all pricey.  Food is mostly seafood, and other standard pub fare.  Servings are generous, as evidenced by the calamari poor boy sandwich, where calamari was literally overflowing off the plate.  Our bill for beers, one entree, and one appetizer was $67 without tip, so be prepared to put down more than you expect.

We had an end table, next to a couple (Tony and his girlfriend/wife/friend) whose team name “Eat It Or Wear It” had a story behind it.  We chose our team name “Hamster On Piano” based on a recently viewed youtube video.  Trivia format was seven rounds.  Categories consisted of music, matching, photo, “dead or alive” (knowing whether a celebrity was still living or not), 2 general trivia, and the final round is Double Point Round.  There was a free round of shots for the best team name, although the winner is virtually decided by the MC, who has pretty poor taste.  We particularly liked “Barack Also Beats Paper” and “America’s Going Brazilian…No More Bush!”  Even our team name was superior to the winners, which was “Brangelina and Jonifer’s Adopted Babies Would Kick Your Adopted Babies’ Asses.”  Totally lame.

As for the trivia itself, it was pretty average.  Questions were of a moderate difficulty and had good variety.  However, we were particularly irked by one question:

“What is the area of shallow submerged water between the shore and deep ocean water called?”

We answered “Shelf” but the answer was “Continental shelf.”  Complaints fell on deaf ears, and we were not given credit.  Another bothersome aspect was the music round.  Despite being a genre our team enjoyed (90s music), we feel they played too much of the song.  Nearly all of the music snippets should have been stopped prior to the lyrics, but most of them were not.  This not only made for a less enjoyable round, but also an extremely lengthy one.

Positives:

1)  Good selection of beers

2)  Decent food

3)  Easy parking

Negatives:

1)  Irritating music round

2)  Not the best MC

3)  No drink/food specials, so very expensive

Overall, given the sheer number of reliably good trivia locales in Chicago, Local Option has too many downsides to warrant going back on a regular basis.  Questions we missed to follow shortly.

Local Option
1102 W. Webster Ave., Chicago
8:00pm – 10:45pm
Free admission

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F. O’Mahony’s: Here Comes Treble!

On November 5, 2008, we went to trivia night at F. O’Mahony’s (formerly Finley Mahony’s).

Trivia is advertised as starting at 8:00pm.  A 7:20pm arrival ensured us our choice of tables, even though the room is pretty small compared to other trivia night venues.  Parking in the neighborhood, however, can be difficult to find.  Trivia didn’t actually start until around 8:30pm.

F. O’Mahony’s Wednesday night specials are $3.50 pints of Stella Artois and $4.00 Stoli cocktails.  They also serve bottled PBR, which none of us had ever seen before, for $3.50.  The food (veggie burger, fish & chips, grilled cheese, and pizza) was not good. 

 

Trivia night consisted of six rounds, each with 10 questions: Cartoon Characters, Politics, Music (song & artist), Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, Movies, and Filthy Riddles.  We had heard that trivia was hosted by a man with an Irish accent (who supposedly also hosts trivia night at sister bar Drum & Monkey–more on that later). None of that turned out to be true, although our F. O’Mahony’s host was likeable and kept trivia moving at a good pace.  The trivia questions are not only read by the host, but also displayed on a plasma screen behind the host.  The display was quite small, but we agreed that it is a good feature that (1) saves trees and (2) limits the number of times the host is asked to repeat questions. 

First place wins a $50 gift certificate to F. O’Mahony’s, second place gets a $25 gift certificate, and second-to-last place wins a prize–this time, a bottle of wine.  Best team name also wins a prize.  We ended the night in a three-way tie for first place.  The tie-breaker was a drinking contest, in which we placed third…we don’t think we have ever seen anyone drink as fast as the first place winner.  At least we got a free beer.

Good trivia night.  Just eat somewhere else beforehand.

F. O’Mahony’s
3701 N. Broadway, Chicago
Trivia starts at 8:00pm, ends around 10:15pm

Free admission
2.5 paws (out of 4)

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