Chicago/Bridgeport-Chinatown

Bridgeport-Chinatown is the South Side at its most dynamic, as the old South Side Irish neighborhood of the Daleys increasingly blends with the old Chinese immigrant community to the north. Enormous cathedrals now stand next to Buddhist temples, and Old Style washes down lo mein. If you are a visitor, though, you only need to keep in mind two things: Chinese food and baseball.

Understand
Chicago's Chinatown is pleasantly authentic. At the many restaurants in the area, local Chinese customers are joined by Chicagoans from all over the city "going Chinese" for the night. Chicago's Chinatown is the third largest in the United States, the Midwestern business center for Chinese-Americans, and home to large populations of Cantonese and Taiwanese. The main street, Wentworth Ave, is a great place for dining out and rummaging through eccentric stores, looking for gifts. Guaranteed Rate Field, better known as Comiskey Park, is several blocks south of Chinatown and is home to the South Side's favorite baseball team, the Chicago White Sox.

Bridgeport is a large Irish-American enclave that has produced some of Chicago's most famous South Side Irish, such as Finley Peter Dunne and the two mayors Daley. Being the birthplace of the city's power brokers has been good to Bridgeport. The first Daley remembered playing in the streets as a child, dodging fetid puddles filled with carcasses from the local slaughterhouses. The Daleys in many ways fitted the mould of the stereotypical Chicago politician, being known for their corruption and ties to organized crime during their terms in office. Bungalows and other single-family homes are more the norm these days. Bridgeport is now seeing a large influx of Mexican immigrants, which means more good food options are springing up left and right, and has even seen a wave of North Siders priced out of hip neighborhoods like Wicker Park and Lincoln Park. Notable recent immigrants are international acclaimed painters, the Zhou brothers, Da Huang and Shan Zuo, who purchased five large buildings along Morgan Street with the hopes to encourage more art and artists in Bridgeport. Regardless of what brings you to the neighborhood, it is full of gritty character (and characters) and is quite possibly haunted — Bridgeport is always an interesting place for a walk.

By train
The main L stations are on the CTA Red Line at Cermak-Chinatown and Sox-35th for visiting Chinatown and Guaranteed Rate Field respectively. Other options include Halsted and Ashland on the Orange Line, which are on the northern and western outskirts of Bridgeport, and 35-Bronzeville-IIT on the Green Line, which is a block and a half east of the Sox-35th station.

By bus
The main routes into Bridgeport-Chinatown from the Loop are #62, which runs the length of Archer Ave from State St, and the #24, which runs from Clark St to Wentworth Ave through the center of Chinatown and next to Guaranteed Rate Field. Route #8 is also useful, as it runs north-south along Halsted St, which runs through the Near West Side and Near North neighborhoods as well as the middle of Bridgeport.

By car
Parking is always plentiful in Bridgeport, and you can usually find spaces right by your destination, though you should check to make sure you're not on a permit parking only residential street. On game days, however, watch out — though no signs go up, you can be ticketed for parking in the neighborhood. Take the L instead to avoid the bad game day traffic and pricey parking lots. Chinatown is more crowded, but you should still have little trouble finding on-street metered parking around Cermak/Archer on weekdays or on off-hours.



The Dan Ryan and Stevenson Expressway cut across the east and north of the district. From the Dan Ryan, take either of the 31st or 35th Street exits; from the Stevenson, take the Cermak Avenue/Chinatown exit for Chinatown and the Damen Avenue exit via Archer or 35th Street for Bridgeport. The main city streets are Halsted Street (north-south), and 31st St, 35th St, and Pershing Rd (east-west).

Get around
The easiest way to get around Bridgeport by public transport is on the two main east-west bus routes #35 and #39, which run along 35th St and Pershing Rd, as well as the aforementioned #8 running north-south on Halsted St. Bus routes are not terribly convenient between the two neighborhoods, but #62 Archer does run along the north of Bridgeport from the Chinatown L stop, from which you can hop on the Halsted route. Chinatown itself is very compact and easily covered on foot.

See
You can cover Chinatown's sites easily in an hour or two on foot, but if you are interested in art, set aside some real time to explore the new Bridgeport galleries that fly under the popular radar, but are quite important to the contemporary art world in Chicago.

Buy
The Chinatown shops are very fun, especially for gifts, but if you tire of knicknacks and knockoffs, Bridgeport has a handful of very eccentric and interesting offerings.

Eat
Chinatown is a wonderful and popular place for foodies, with lots of options, great authentic food, and reasonable prices. The flip side is the curt "Chinatown service," but if you've got a good attitude about it, that merely adds to the authenticity. The two most acclaimed restaurants here are Ken Kee and Lao Sze Chuan, but there are plenty of less known gems to seek out as well. For dim sum, the great rivalry is between heavyweights Shui Wah, Little Three Happiness, and The Phoenix. One big thing to watch out for are the scores of inferior dishes on those long menus. Most restaurants specialize in a limited range of dishes, and you need to know which to get a good meal—order a specialty listed below, or ask the server what the specialties are (if he directs you to the Kung Pao, insist on an authentic recommendation).

Bridgeport is far further off the beaten foodie path, but it's a quirky neighborhood with some excellent options. Ed's Potstickers and Han 202 are in particular standout destination restaurants that really warrant a trip.

Drink
As you might expect from such an Irish neighborhood, drinking is an established tradition in Bridgeport. If Chicago machine politics and general intrigue are your cup of tea, finish a tour of Bridgeport with a cold beer at the birthplace of many a corrupt scheme. In Chinatown, some of the nicer sit-down restaurants serve alcohol, and the bar at nearby Bertucci's Corner is very pleasant. If you're up for a weirder Chinatown experience, head to the nameless, haunted, union man's bar at 26th and Wentworth.

For tea, you're in luck. In addition to dedicated teahouses, every sit down restaurant in Chinatown will serve you endless, free loose-leaf oolong tea with your meal. If you care more about the tea than the meal, Mandarin Kitchen's standard oolong is the finest.



Sleep
If you want to get out of the touristy areas and get a real Chicago neighborhood experience, the three options below are excellent.



Connect
The most pleasant spots to check your email have got to be the Bridgeport Coffeehouse, and Scoops. But for those without a laptop, there is also free internet access also at the following two public libraries:



Go next

 * Chicago's Southeast Asian Strip is located in Uptown around Argyle Street, at the CTA Red Line stop of the same name. It is a better bet for Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, and other Southeast Asian regional cuisines. It is also far less touristed than Chinatown.
 * If you came here after reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and are feeling disappointed in the general lack of hog butchery, head due southwest to visit the few remaining monuments to the once vast Chicago meatpacking district, around the Union Stockyard gate in Chicago's Southwest Side.
 * For those in search of the perfect Irish pub in Chicago, you may have better luck in the Far Southwest Side.