Listening Room At The Exchange

The Listening Room is a new bar and listening cafe in the Loop. What’s a listening cafe, you ask? Taken from their website, it’s “a clubby dining experience with a state-of-the-art audio experience.” As it turns out, it’s not very clubby–it’s more of an upscale cafe that works for a casual date night. And the food is quite good. The menu has dishes like tender chicken thighs with crispy skin, mac and cheese that gets melted raclette poured over it tableside, and some roasted carrots served with a fluffy coconut mousse and topped with peanuts. The “listening” part really just means that the sound quality is really great, and the music genre changes, so call ahead to see what they’re playing before you visit.