“So, what are you having?”
I have been asked this question thousands of times in dozens of taverns. I have answered in a direct manner, saying, “Bourbon” or “Vodka,” adding “on the rocks,” especially in recent years in the face of those barroom invaders, the large blocks of ice (often called “king cubes”) that have become commonplace and are said to prevent the dilution of your drink.
I have voiced a few exceptions, such as a margarita here and there, maybe a beer. But I like to think I have been a simple customer for bartenders. Most of these people worked at my frequent stops: Bobby, the Khribech brothers (Bouch and Tarik), Brisa, long ago Walter and for a rather astonishing 35 years until his retirement in 2015, Jeff Magill at the Billy Goat Tavern. There has been Tim at the Old Town Ale House, Jay Kovar at the bygone O’Rourke’s, Jose at Riccardo’s …
So, I was sitting in Tavern on Rush recently when I met Melissa Weaver, who was working as a server at Tavern while pursuing a tavern dream of her own. She told me she was a mixologist.
I asked her, “What is a mixologist?” And the 46-year-old said, “It is just a new word for a bartender, one that addresses the increased creativity of the job, which is getting ever more complex. But I like the science of it, the experimentation with ingredients, with tastes. But my goal is not to impress you. It is to make a cocktail that is to your liking. And having a good personality helps.”
She has a lively and ebullient manner, and she is right about the relationship between bartenders and their customers. It can be a special one. Yes, it involves booze but also, over time, familiarity and intimacy. It is often a bartender with whom many people feel comfortable sharing their hopes and fears, their troubles and triumphs. It is also a vanishing bond, since there are fewer taverns than there used to be and, though you can still find some men and women who have been serving drinks for decades, tending bar is no longer seen as a lifelong livelihood.
Weaver was raised in Burr Ridge, with father Doug, a union laborer, mother Glenda, who worked in the IT world, and two younger brothers. While attending Lyons Township High School, she also pursued a degree in cosmetology.
She married early, divorced quickly and remains close to her only child, adult son Dominic, who lives in the Beverly neighborhood. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business management and administration from Benedictine University, and worked for nearly two decades in the health care industry before moving into the hospitality world.
She lives near Wrigley Field with her wife of nine years, a mortgage business executive named Christina. They are serious softball players of the 11-inch variety in the Chicago Metropolitan Sports Association, the largest not-for-profit LGBTQ+ sports organization in the Midwest. Her wife pitches and she plays second base and is one of the league’s commissioners.
“We also have a serious home garden, filled with items I use to make drinks that I test on my wife,” she says.
Chicago has long been a fine place for thirsty folks, ever since those frontier days when early settler Mark Beaubien enlivened his Sauganash Inn with fiddle-playing in the 1830s. We have seen some great saloons come and go, and some stay. The reason, as explained by the great late piano bar man Buddy Charles late one night at The Acorn on Oak: “Taverns and saloons work because people are inherently eager for intimacy.”
Though the word “mixologist” was not coined until the mid-1800s and didn’t move into common usage until this century, we have seen some “interesting” bartending experiments.
Mixologist Melissa Weaver at the Tavern on Rush bar where she is currently working as a server, Sept. 8, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)
There was Cohasset Punch, a blend of rum, wine and fruit, first sold in the 1890s and, more recently and, frankly, disgustingly, something called the “Chicago Handshake,” a shot of Malört accompanied by an Old Style beer.
Neither is on my drink menu, but for the most durable alcoholic creation, I go back to the early 1900s and a South Loop area called Whiskey Row and its Lone Star Saloon. It was run by a guy named Michael “Mickey” Finn, a diabolically clever sort, who laced drinks with drugs that would incapacitate customers, making them easy to rob and giving the language a durable term.
Weaver started her hospitality career as a server, working her way up to bartender at a number of taverns and eventually being a beverage director at some acclaimed restaurants. Four cocktails she created have been featured on local TV show food segments.
She came close to opening her own place a few years ago, but that deal fell through. In 2022, she founded a company called Drinks on The House, a craft cocktail pop up that she orchestrates for private events.
She enjoys working at Tavern as she dreams of a tavern of her own, saying, “A neighborhood place with a capacity of about 100 people and each day — we’d be open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. — we’d feature a different and creative type of sandwich, along with, of course, various craft cocktails.”
“What about a guy with simple tastes?” I asked.
“We won’t discriminate,” she said, with a smile.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com