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Milk Room

Art Direction / Build / Concept / Design

One of the last beverage concepts to launch within the larger Chicago Athletic Association hotel project, Milk Room is an exclusive eight seat micro bar that reinvigorates a historic, prohibition-era drinking ‘nook’ that had long been unused.

Located on the second floor of the CAA building, the room first got its designation during prohibition, where the athletic club’s members could tuck into the tiny space for a glass of ‘milk’, one purportedly spiked with whiskey.

Reconceptualized by Land and Sea Dept. in 2015, the Milk Room is now an intimate, reservation-driven bar and tasting room. The space features a spirit-forward cocktail concept that focuses on and utilizes extremely rare and vintage spirits, set alongside a refined, tightly edited food menu of small plates.

The space itself was largely left as it was found, with some design tweaks by New York firm Roman and Williams and some finish work by Land and Sea Dept.

LSD art dept. developed the room’s identity, which carries through on logos, menus and website. The leather bound menu books were produced by Chicago-based Eye Of The Sun.