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Home / Businesses / Big Chicks

Big Chicks

Uptown · Bar/Pub Food Community-sourced, unverified
📍 5024 N Sheridan Rd, Chicago, IL 60640

Big Chicks has been Uptown's unofficial gay community center since Michelle Fire bought what had been a veterans' bar in 1986 and inherited its regulars, their dogs, and its original bartenders along with the lease — the name itself comes from a trip Fire took to India, where men in Bandra kept calling her 'Big Chick.' Nearly four decades later, the walls are still hung with Fire's own art collection, pulling from Chicago's gallery scene and artists with real national and international reputations, which makes the bar function as something closer to a lived-in gallery than a typical dive.

$
A free Sunday BBQ buffet running more than 30 years straight, at an LGBTQ Uptown institution inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame — decorated throughout with owner Michelle Fire's own art collection.

During the AIDS crisis, Big Chicks served as a genuine distribution point for HIV education and a place where health providers could reach the community directly — the kind of informal civic role that got it inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2016. The bar's signature institution is its free Sunday spread — cheeseburgers, hot dogs, brats, salad, fruit, and dessert, running more than 30 years strong, popular enough that the synagogue across the back alley lets patrons use its parking lot on Sundays. Next door is Tweet, Fire's sister restaurant and brunch spot, open daily 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. under the same ownership and the same cash-only policy.

Michelle Fire's son, Michael Sanders, has taken on a bigger role running things more recently, which bodes well for a place built this specifically around one person's taste and generosity outlasting her. No formal happy hour applies, but free food every single Sunday for over three decades is a harder deal to top than any discount drink special could be.

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Specials at Big Chicks

(1)

Big Chicks

Free Sunday BBQ · $0.00
UptownCommunity

Hours

Mon-Fri4pm-2am (kitchen 4pm-10:30pm)
Sat-Sun9am-2am (kitchen 4pm-10:30pm) (per the official site)
🥡 Takeout unconfirmed 📞 (773) 728-5511

Amenities & accessibility

❔Takeout: unverified
❔Wheelchair access: unverified

Location

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