Trading Up
A Hidden Bar Behind the Board of Trade

One percenters.

Ninety-nine percenters.

Both of you: listen up.

It’s the holidays. Put your differences aside. Hug it out. Talk it out over a drink somewhere.

Okay, we see: one of you wants fancy scotch. One of you wants locally brewed beer.

Hey, not a problem: The Option Room, a tiny wood-paneled saloon tucked on a side street in the Financial District, is now ready to host a little tension-breaking détente.

It’s located in the front of the LaSalle Atrium Building—the onetime Fort Dearborn Hotel from 1912—and still has the original checkerboard tile and wood paneling, now highly polished and accented with gilded mirrors and chandeliers dripping with crystals. But seriously, it’s really a down-to-earth spot. Well, as down-to-earth as any place that looks like the library in a Rockefeller mansion could.

Talk it out over an afternoon beer, or dabble with their selection of cocktails. Nothing says Man of the People like a Southern Dr. Pepper, made with bourbon, amaretto and bitters.

If you just need to take the office out for one quick Sazerac before everyone heads their separate ways, there’s a private back room. The back room also has a small VIP section.

You don’t want to rub elbows with the unwashed masses in IT.