CHIGuide
9 Heated Outdoor Spots To Watch March Madness
Well, March Madness is back, the Illini are a No.1 seed, and spring officially starts this weekend. If any of the above means something to you, or if you’re just feeling the urge to watch sports in the vicinity of friends, here are nine great spots with TVs and heated outdoor seating so you can do just that.
The Spots
This Irish pub on the border of the West Loop and West Town has heated tents available for outdoor dining. Bonus: they also have plenty of TVs for watching sports and will be playing the tournament all weekend long.
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Frontier in Wicker Park has TV’s in their outdoor beer garden, along with a giant fireplace. Also, they have March Madness food packages available, where you can get deals on their whole animal meals (including a roast pig) and $20 Goose Island buckets.
The patio at Lotties Pub is called Camp Lotties. And it’s full of heated canvas tents that do, in fact, look like little retro tents from The Peanuts. And each one has its own TV and bluetooth setup.
This 3,000-square-foot heated rooftop bar in Wicker Park is very large. So, it’s fitting that this spot broadcasts games on two giant 120-square-inch TVs, which they’ll be doing throughout the tournament.
Graystone Tavern in Wrigleyville has a brand new heated beer garden. The space has seven TVs, cute string lights overhead, and serves bar food like wings, cheese curds, and chicken tenders.
Rizzo’s is a sports bar that’s right across the street from Wrigley Field, and has a huge outdoor patio with heated floors and a retractable roof. Come here when you want to watch basketball and/or bathe in the residual glow of the stadium lights until you can go to an actual game. Also worth noting, this spot has a pretty great burger.
There’s very little you can’t do on the patio at Park and Field in Logan Square. It feels less like an outdoor patio and more like an outdoor city. The space is gigantic, with tables, bocce courts, Adirondack chairs, multiple firepits, and a camper-turned-bar. Plus, it has seven TVs with sound on for NCAA games.
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Paradise Park is a pizza spot in Wicker Park with an all-season over-the-top patio. It has things like astroturf, flamingo lawn ornaments, swing sets, and a Winnebago. As long as you don’t let all the fun decor distract you, it’s a pretty great place to watch the tournament.
If you went to a Big 10 school, then you probably don’t need us to tell you that Benchmark is a great place to catch a game.They play lots of college sports, and the whole place has about 40 TV’s (that’s not an exaggeration). Combine a retractable roof with good bar food and you can sit here eating and drinking all day. Make sure you get a skillet cookie.
Not only does Kirkwood in Lakeview have a large patio where you can watch basketball all weekend long, but they also have tournament deals like $6 stadium cups of domestic beers. They also have a food menu full of things like wings, pretzels, and burgers.
We like watching games at Gaslight in Lincoln Park because of their covered, all-season patio. This means we can watch the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, and Cubs systematically break our hearts 12 months out of the year. And in March, we get to watch basketball. Here’s hoping we don’t get our brackets busted this weekend.
