Nobody's Darling

Nobody's Darling opened in late May 2021 at 1744 W Balmoral Avenue in Andersonville, a Black- and queer-owned cocktail bar from Renauda Riddle and Angela Barnes, who met a decade earlier volunteering at the Center on Halsted. Riddle had been organising pop-up events and parties for queer women; Barnes is a business attorney. The two had been regulars at Joie De Vine, the lesbian-owned neighbourhood wine bar, and had even discussed buying it before it closed for the pandemic and never reopened — so this room exists partly to replace what the city lost. Its name comes from the Alice Walker poem "Be Nobody's Darling", an ode to outsiders, and the interior leans glamorous, with chandeliers salvaged from the shuttered downtown restaurant Lawry's. Barnes has described imagining a laid-back, Sunday-morning, Nina Simone-styled lounge, while Riddle wanted a classy, sexy room where great cocktails arrive on demand. It was a James Beard finalist for Outstanding Bar Program in 2022, and has drawn national coverage from the Washington Post and NBC News for its place in Chicago's lesbian bar history. The bar is accessible, has street parking, and takes booth reservations against a minimum spend.

It is worth being precise about the non-alcoholic offering, because this is a full-proof cocktail bar with a small zero-proof corner rather than a sober-forward room. The summer 2026 menu carries a section headed "Low and No Alcohol" at $12, and only two of its four drinks are actually alcohol-free: Mai No Tai, built on Ritual non-alcoholic rum with DHOS orange liqueur, orgeat and lime, and Say Less, using DHOS tequila and orange liqueur with agave, hibiscus grenadine and lime. Both are properly made and priced below the $14–15 full cocktails. The other two in that section are labelled low-ABV and do contain alcohol. Non-alcoholic beer is Sam Adams Just The Haze and Athletic's Upside Dawn at $8. One caution that matters more than the drink count: the menu groups THC and CBD seltzers under its non-alcoholic heading, and one house cocktail is both 16% ABV and THC-dosed, so read the line rather than the section header before ordering.