Tom H.
Yelp
I attended a Guiness Stout tasting here last night. It's a big, mostly concrete raw loft space in a very good location, along the Randolph Street Restaurant Row, a block from the Morgan Street L stop on the Green & Pink CTA lines. The space looks like it could be adapted for many uses. So--a big, chameleon-like loft space in a good location.
This really doesn't apply to Venue One, but my thoughts on the Guiness tasting event: the standard Guiness Stout is still my favorite, but was oddly served ice cold, not the Irish-style cellar temperature, which surprised me a little, as the event was an official Guiness company event. Maybe they've decided we Americans will never give up our ice and icy drinks? The other two tasting samples, Guiness Foreign Export & Guiness Lager were to me, just average, not as good as the standard. The Foreign Export is hoppier and more alcoholic (both were preservatives when shipping to Africa and South Asia) but had a shorter finish and seemed less complex. The lager was Guiness "lite", aimed at lager drinkers everywhere who might not choose a full bodied beer; stout with training wheels. The event was nice and well-planned, a couple of pop-up bars, pro bouncers/security, Halloween-faced customer service reps, roaming bussers and all. Nice video projection of the company and its products. A fun MC gave a short presentation. And I learned how to do a proper Guiness pour, an art form in itself.