Beneath The Aviary, the boundary-pushing cocktail lab from the team behind three-Michelin-starred Alinea, sits an unmarked door and one of the most quietly exclusive rooms in America. The Office began as an invitation-only speakeasy, and it still seats only around twenty guests among rare and vintage spirits.
We rank The Office No. 3 on our list of the 25 best hidden gem bars in the world. Few bars combine secrecy and pedigree so completely: this is a genuine hidden room attached to one of the most decorated cocktail programs on the planet, run by people who treat a drink with the same seriousness as a tasting menu.
An unmarked door beneath The Aviary
The Office lives downstairs from The Aviary at 955 West Fulton Market, in Chicago's Fulton Market District on the western edge of the West Loop. There is no sign and no obvious way in; you arrive through an unmarked, often locked door and descend into a clubby, low-lit room that feels a world apart from the buzzing bar above it. Where The Aviary is theatrical and open, The Office is intimate and hushed,a small space, roughly twenty-one or twenty-two seats today, lined with bottles you won't find on many back bars anywhere.
That intimacy is the point. The Office was conceived as a retreat within a destination,a place to sit with a rare spirit or a bespoke cocktail and give it your full attention, insulated from the crowds. It is the hidden gem for people who have already done the headline rooms and want something smaller, quieter and considerably harder to get into.
The Alinea pedigree
To understand The Office you have to understand what it belongs to. It is part of the Alinea Group, the restaurant company built by chef Grant Achatz and his business partner Nick Kokonas,the same universe as Alinea itself, one of only a handful of American restaurants to hold three Michelin stars. The Aviary, which opened in 2011, was their attempt to apply that restaurant-grade rigour to cocktails, treating bartenders as chefs and running what amounts to a cocktail kitchen, complete with a dedicated ice program overseen by an "ice chef."
The results speak for themselves. The Aviary's program won a James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar in 2013, and the bar climbed The World's 50 Best Bars list, reaching as high as No. 13 in 2014 and appearing again at No. 39 in 2016. Those accolades belong to The Aviary program as a whole rather than to The Office alone, but The Office is where that ambition turns inward and personal,the same kitchen's talent, focused on a room of twenty. The creative direction has long been associated with bar director Micah Melton, and the group thought enough of the concept to publish a book, The Office: Classic Cocktails, credited to Achatz, Melton and Allen Hemberger.
From invitation-only to a Tock reservation
The Office made its name on exclusivity. In its earliest days it was invitation-only, a genuinely private room that most Chicagoans knew about but almost no one could enter. That changed in 2012, when Achatz used Twitter to open up access to the public,a small revolution that turned a rumoured secret into a bookable one. Today you reserve through Tock, and while it's no longer invitation-only, the door still does not open for walk-ins. Getting in remains a deliberate act.
The group also exported the idea for a time: a New York branch of The Aviary and The Office operated on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental from 2017 until it closed in 2020. The Chicago original, though, is the one that matters,the room where the concept was born and where it's still at its best.
The Office Hour, and what to drink
The signature way to experience the bar is the "Office Hour," a guided sit-down of roughly an hour built around bespoke cocktails and luxury bites. Rather than handing you a long menu, the team often builds drinks around a single conversation or a single spirit, drawing on a deep cellar of vintage and rare bottles that gives the room its particular character. This is a bar where you might drink a cocktail built on a spirit older than you are, explained as it's poured.
If you'd rather order à la carte, the strength here is classics executed with obsessive precision and a back bar that rewards curiosity,ask what's unusual and interesting, and let the bartenders steer. Pricing sits firmly at $$$$ for the city, which is fair given the rarity of the pours and the labour behind every serve. The Office is not a value proposition; it's an occasion.
Why we rank it No. 3
The Office earns its place near the top of our list on the strength of two things that rarely travel together: it is a real hidden bar,unmarked, intimate, historically invitation-only,and it is attached to a cocktail program with world-class, award-winning credentials. Many secret bars trade on mystery alone; The Office has the substance to back the theatre, with the Alinea Group's exacting standards behind every drink.
It sits behind Angel's Share and Handshake Speakeasy only because those bars are, respectively, the genre's founder and its current technical high point. On the measure that matters most for this list,a genuinely concealed room that's worth every bit of the effort to reach,The Office is among the very best in the world. For more of the city's drinking, see our Chicago hidden gems guide and our full Chicago bar guide.
The Aviary, upstairs
You can't fully appreciate The Office without understanding the room it sits beneath. The Aviary, which opened in 2011, was conceived as a cocktail bar run like a restaurant kitchen. Bartenders are treated as chefs, working at stations in an open "cocktail kitchen," and the bar maintains a dedicated ice program overseen by what the group calls an "ice chef",a level of specialisation almost unheard of in the drinks world. Cocktails at The Aviary can arrive in custom glassware, sealed pouches or vessels designed for a single drink, each engineered to change as you sip.
That ambition is what earned The Aviary its accolades and, by extension, gave The Office its pedigree. The program's James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar in 2013 and its high placements on The World's 50 Best Bars,No. 13 in 2014, No. 39 in 2016,reflect a kitchen-grade approach to mixing drinks that was genuinely new when it launched. The Office is where that machinery is turned toward intimacy: the same talent and the same cellar, focused on a room of twenty rather than a bustling bar.
Achatz, Kokonas and the Alinea Group
The people behind The Office are among the most influential in modern American dining. Chef Grant Achatz built his reputation at Alinea, the Chicago restaurant that helped define progressive American cuisine and holds three Michelin stars; his business partner Nick Kokonas is a former derivatives trader who reshaped how restaurants sell tables. Together their Alinea Group operates a small constellation of venues,Alinea, Next, The Aviary and The Office among them,that share a restless, experimental sensibility.
Kokonas's influence is felt at The Office in a very practical way. He pioneered the ticketing and reservation model that became the Tock platform, and it's through Tock that you now book the bar. The decision to open The Office to the public in 2012,Achatz announced it on Twitter,was of a piece with that thinking: a famously exclusive room made accessible through a system, rather than a list of names. It turned a rumoured secret into something anyone determined enough could experience, without diluting the room itself.
The book, and the New York chapter
The Office has been influential enough to warrant its own book. The Office: Classic Cocktails,credited to Grant Achatz, bar director Micah Melton and Allen Hemberger,documents the room's approach to the classics and its philosophy of hospitality, a rare thing for a bar this small and this hidden. Melton, who has long guided the creative direction of the Alinea Group's bar program, is the figure most associated with what The Office pours today.
For a few years the concept travelled. A branch of The Aviary and The Office operated on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental in New York from 2017, bringing the cocktail-kitchen idea to Manhattan before it closed permanently in 2020. The New York experiment is a useful reminder that The Office is not a format to be franchised lightly; the Chicago original, rooted in the same building as the program that created it, is where the concept works best and where its history lives.
Craft in every detail
What ties all of this together is a refusal to cut corners. The Office's appeal isn't a gimmick or a hidden door for its own sake; it's the promise that a cocktail here has been considered as carefully as a course at Alinea. The deep cellar of vintage and rare spirits means an evening can turn into a small education,a pour explained as it's made, a spirit older than the person drinking it, a classic rebuilt to an exacting standard. That combination of scholarship and hospitality, delivered in a room of twenty behind an unmarked door, is precisely what earns The Office its place near the very top of our ranking.
How to visit
Reserve through Tock; The Office does not take walk-ins, and the room is small enough that tables go quickly. Hours run in the evening and can vary by season, so confirm current times when you book,recent listings have it opening around 5pm from Tuesday to Saturday, with slightly later closes at the weekend. Dress the part; this is a $$$$ room with a considered atmosphere, and it's best enjoyed unhurried. Come planning to stay a while, ideally for the Office Hour, and treat it as the centrepiece of the evening rather than a quick nightcap.
What to order
- 01
The Office Hour
The signature guided sit-down: bespoke cocktails and luxury bites over about an hour.
- 02
A vintage-spirit pour
Ask the team to open the cellar,rare and aged bottles are the house speciality.
- 03
A classic, to spec
An Old Fashioned or Manhattan built with Alinea-level precision.
- 04
Bartender's choice
Describe what you like and let them build around a single spirit or idea.
