Cherry Street Tavern

The Cherry Street is a corner tappie in Logan Square, with the comfortable vibe of its neighborhood. It looks the way it should: wood on the walls, tile on the floor, and behind the bar, a carved and mirror-backed altar to the Beverage Gods.

Check the blackboard to the left of the bar for the list of draft beers. Locals like Yards, Flying Fish, Stoudts, Dogfish Head, and Yuengling are well represented, along with the imports and the swill. There's something for everyone.

If the Eagles, Phillies, Flyers, or Sixers are on TV, then they're on TV here: a couple of TVs in the front room compete with the jukebox (translation: LOUD), and a couple more in the back room quietly go uncontested. While the front room says "bar" (beer signs, liquor bottles), the leitmotif of the back room is "sports". A centerpiece of the sports memorabilia is a blown-up photo of a legendary local high-school coach bawling out a referee, who looks like he's withstanding a gale.

Living up to the "tavern" moniker, the Cherry Street serves a simple, solid menu of excellent bar food: soup in the winter, and sandwiches and nachos year-round. A stand-out is the roast beef with provolone on a kaiser roll, with horseradish on the side.

Bill is your host, and he brings real enthusiasm to the job. If you ask him for a plate of nachos, he'll say, "Nachos? Sure, we can do that!" with a tone that implies that he would love to do that. The rest of the staff can't quite reach his level of eagerness, but everybody here is competent or beautiful (and some are both). So you're good in any case.

The bar has been here for decades, and local lore has it that Jimi Hendrix refreshed himself here, back when the original Electric Factory was on the catty-corner block. Whether that's true or not, the Cherry Street has been experienced by many.