Pippin’s Tavern, once a simple place on Chicago's Rush Street, gets reborn in style
Only a few of the estimated million or so people who attended and gawked and cheered at Saturday’s Magnificent Mile Lights Festival, roaring back for its 30th year after last year’s COVID-related cancellation, wandered off the Michigan Avenue parade route, with its one million lights and Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and explored the surrounding neighborhood.
As much as the parade signaled for many a sign of renewal, hopeful signs could also be found nearby. Just east of Michigan Avenue on Chicago Avenue, people would have found the brightly lit trees of Seneca Park and its Eli Schulman playground, recently updated with more space, softer surfaces and many new items on which to climb and frolic.
There had been a tree lighting ceremony there Thursday evening — last year’s having been canceled — for the 14th year. The event was hosted by Marc Schulman, the president of the Eli’s Cheesecake concern, whose late father Eli long ran restaurants across the city. It was Marc, a resident of the neighborhood for, well, almost forever, who helped create the park.
He was also the person who, as a member of Greater North Michigan Avenue Association, came up with the idea for the lights parade, which, he told me, started modestly. “That first year it was just a few horse-drawn carriages and one double-decker bus,” he said. “The street wasn’t even closed. It was a small affair.”
“This is its comeback,” he said. “It’s great to see so many people, so many families.”
The city bounces back in various ways and one of the most vivid is what has happened to Pippin’s Tavern. It was for more than four decades what could charitably be called a “dive bar” and was located at 860 N. Rush St. It was never mentioned in guidebooks or made any list of great local taverns. But it was a cozy and unassuming place, frequented by the young folks who attend the colleges nearby and by neighbors who preferred their beer cold and their conversation lively. Touting itself as an Irish pub, it also attracted such celebrities as Bono of U2.
Those who walked from the lights parade to where Pippin’s once operated found it shuttered, as it has been since June 2020. But they would also have found, with a few more steps, the new Pippin’s Tavern, which opened last week at 39 E. Chicago Ave., in what had been, until closing in December 2019, a spot called Devon Seafood & Steak (another is open in Oakbrook Terrace).
This new Pippin’s is to the old Pippin’s what Michigan Avenue is to the old Maxwell Street.
One night last week the woman who owned the old place and this new one was in the new location with some friends. Her name is Lyn McKeaney, a buoyant and bright woman who runs the Lodge Management Group, a gathering of saloons that includes She-Nannigans, The Lodge and the Original Mother’s, on Division Street; the Hangge-Uppe, Streeter’s Tavern and the Redhead Piano Bar to the south and the River Shannon in Lincoln Park.
Her late husband, F. Owen McKeaney, started this saloon empire when he bought The Lodge in 1970. He died unexpectedly in 2001, suffering a heart attack in his company’s offices. Lyn carried on with determined energy.
The new Pippin’s, with large windows facing north and west, is all dark wood and stylish, with plenty of artful Irish design touches as well as three banquet rooms and another barroom on the second floor. This new Pippin’s is the first of McKeaney’ s tavern brood to offer food and it has a menu peppered with such items as charred cauliflower, a veal sweetbread corn dog, smoked carrots, beef heart meatballs, fried chicken, roasted branzino, oysters and shrimp … you get the idea.
The executive chef is Amanda Barnes, originally from Houston and a veteran of the kitchens at of such local spots as the Publican, Mindy’s HotChocolate, Celeste and the Purple Pig.
She told me that most of the food served comes from local purveyors, but I will leave it to my Tribune colleagues to take full measure of the quality of the food. I will vouch for its vast selection of beers and many, many bottles of booze.
The old Pippin’s did offer, in its way, some food, simple fare that could be ordered from the shop next door, which was called Downtown Dogs.
That too was once part of the LMG empire, but McKeaney was unable to come to terms with the landlord (ditto with the former Pippin’s) and so the space has been reborn as Devil Dawgs, the latest in a small chain of hot dog oases. This is its fourth location, its original flagship shop closing late in 2020 after 10 years at 2147 N. Sheffield Ave. in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
No one seems to know the precise origin of the Pippin’s name. One over-served man claimed it was named after former Chicago Bull Scottie Pippen. Others thought it might have derived from the nickname for Peregrin and meant “traveler” or “pilgrim.” One definition has it as a type of apple, another as an “admirable person or thing.” There is a Pippin Street in the Southwest Side’s Ashburn neighborhood and it is said that its name came from either the apple or a place in Virginia.
But what’s in a name? This new Pippin’s was crowded with post-parade patrons, grabbing the eyes of others making their way along the sidewalk toward home by bus or “L” to sections of the city and suburbs less flashy than this section of town but where, one hoped, they might find other signs of hope for a new year.
Time will tell with Pippin’s, though I did hear a lot of encouraging comments. Some came from Cliff Carlson, who is the publisher and editor of Irish American News, a spirited local newspaper. He had been a guest of the new Pippin’s at a special event a few weeks ago and when I tracked him down a couple of days ago, he was in, of all places, Ireland.
That’s where he was when he told me, “Even here in Ireland I was thinking about the new Pippin’s. As cool as bars in Ireland are, Pippins would stand tall with any of them, and it has a touch of style few can match.”
