Thursday 27th of November 2008 02:43:03 PM

link
I was here on a Thursday night. It occurs that the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has been hosting a nomihodai here on the third Thursday of each month since January 2008.
I received an E-Vite from Elizabeth Burke. I deduce she received my E-Mail address from my attendance at CFF's Festiv-Ale beer tasting at Goose Island Wrigleyville. I first learned about the Festiv-Ale from a flyer placed in a shopping bag which was distributed at the Yelp-Around-The-World event at Dank Haus. Got that?
For $15, I was to receive three hours of draft beers, wines, or house brands of spirits. Five dollars of that was diverted directly into CFF's coffers. Thursday is also Casey Moran's one dollar hamburger night.
#152 Buses on Addison were oddly slow eastbound in Thursday's rush hour. I arrived at Casey Moran's at 6:15 pm. I was referred to the area where Elizabeth, and Jeremy were sitting at a table.
Casey Moran's is a huge venue. It is owned by the same corporation which owns Kinkade's, Kendall's, Kelsey's, O’Donovan's, and the Twisted Lizard taverns. It is an Ohio State Univ., and a Cleveland Browns bar. I want to delve into the reason for its middle-of-the-road rating.
It is schizophrenic.
There are enough flat-screen televisions in the venue, in both the main room where you enter, and a sidebar to the south [left], to give each patron his own screen {or so it seemed}. But at 6:15 pm, they were all tuned to the same program (an under-23 ‘professional’ basketball game from Madison Square Garden). _You don't need thirty 52-inch flat-screen TVs displaying only one program._
Was anyone paying attention to this basketball game? It didn't really matter. At 7:15 pm, all of the TVs were tuned away to a professional gridiron game between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Yes, *all of them*. (A little after that, I note it managed to put an ice hockey game between Dallas and Chicago on some of the TVs near the main bar.)
The hamburger at Casey Moran's is pretty good. It is regularly $7.95; so this is a very good deal. The hamburger includes purple onions, lettuce, tomato, and a long-cut dill pickle. The toppings are very fresh. The way I test them is to taste them directly. The purple onions moistened my eyes when I chomped on them. The french fries were institutional, and not as good. They were thin and hard. They needed ketchup. So did the burger, but that is not a snit at it.
Then we had a snag with our server(s). Supposedly, _all the draft beers_ are included in the nomihodai. At the last venue I visited which had a nomihodai, Duffy's Tavern, craft beers were excluded, but imported beers were allowed. I looked over the tap handles; and figured that craft beers were excluded here. Our {first} server told me that Dos Equis *was not included*. She mentioned the beers which were included. This encompassed _Fat Tire Amber Ale and Samuel Adams Oktoberfest_. While she was working, I had one Fat Tire and one Samuel Adams.
Then she went off. Our second server tried to claim that the only beers on offer with this were the standard dreadnaughts [i.e.: all ending in "Light" or "Lite"]. This prompted a rejoinder from Elizabeth (!), which sent her scurrying back to her bar manager.
{Another 'deer in the headlights' moment, people.}
Fat Tire and Samuel Adams were restored.
The washrooms here are in the basement, so it is *not* handicapped-accessible. The ladies' room is at the base of the stairs, which is in the side bar room. The mens' room is a twisting maze-like passage in the shape of a 'g' further along. I espied chairs for a washroom attendant in each {uh oh}, but there were no attendants this evening.
For its beer selection, and the quality of its hamburger, Casey Moran's probably should get four stars. But its perplexing television programming, and the intelligence capacity of at least one of its servers {again - note for how long CFF has been hosting this event} should crash it down to two stars. Therefore, this is an easy three-star rating.

Transit options: This is Wrigleyville. This is easy. The only bus which quits here is the #152 Addison westbound [10:30 pm weeknights | 8:00 pm weekends]. The #22 Clark runs all the time. The Red Line "L"'s Addison station, with all its b**eball bunting, is three blocks away [one block south, two blocks east].