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Home / Businesses / Café Ba-Ba-Reeba!

Café Ba-Ba-Reeba!

Food + DrinkLincoln Park · Spanish/Tapas Community-sourced, unverified
📍 2024 N Halsted St, Chicago, IL 60614

Café Ba-Ba-Reeba! has been Chicago's original tapas bar since December 1985, when Lettuce Entertain You's Rich Melman and chef Gabino Sotelino opened it on Halsted Street in Lincoln Park and introduced most of the city to the idea of a meal made of small Spanish plates.

$$

Four decades in, it still has the award-winning sangria, the Valencian paella and the occasional flamenco night that made it a neighborhood institution near the zoo and DePaul — and it's the flagship that later spun off Lil' Ba-Ba-Reeba! in River North. Happy hour is the restaurant's 'best-kept secret,' and it runs every day of the week from 4 to 6pm in the bar and cocktail area only, first come, first served.

It's a properly cheap way to eat Spanish: $1.50 pintxos like the gilda (gordal olive, piparra pepper and Cantabrian anchovy) or a deviled egg under crispy jamón ibérico; $3 to $5 tapas including the house's famous bacon-wrapped dates, patatas bravas, jamón croquetas, Spanish meatballs in sherry-tomato sauce and fried shishitos; $23 pitchers of classic red sangria ($6 a glass); $4 Estrella Damm; and a $6 vermut-and-soda for the 'hora del vermut.' Weekend brunch runs Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 3pm. The restaurant opens at 4pm Monday through Thursday, 11:30am Friday and 10am on weekends; valet parking is available, and Lettuce's 3.5% check surcharge applies (removable on request).

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Specials at Café Ba-Ba-Reeba!

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Café Ba-Ba-Reeba!

Food + Drink
Happy Hour: $4 Bacon-Wrapped Dates + $23 Sangria Pitchers · $1.50-23
Lincoln Park4PM–6PMCommunity

Hours

Mon-Thu4-9PM
Fri11:30AM-11PM
Sat10AM-11PM
Sun10AM-9PM (brunch Sat-Sun 10AM-3PM)
🥡 Takeout unconfirmed 📞 (773) 935-5000

Amenities & accessibility

❔Takeout: unverified
❔Wheelchair access: unverified
🅿️Valet available; SpotHero

Location

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