Pressed, he might concede that Gibson's, a downtown institution
that books up weeks in advance and serves steaks and pies so big
you have to cut them with a butcher knife, is his favorite. "Yeah,
you got all the pictures on the wall: the old cats, Frank Baby and
all of the elite, the old pilgrims," he says. But then he catches
himself. Mac considers it sacrilege to crown one great Chicago
steak place over another. "You can't go wrong when you're talking
about good steak," he says of his favorites. "Because they are all
so elegant; they are all so quality. It's hard to grade when you
got good stuff. I hate to say which one is the best. I go to Mr.
Benny's, which is old
Chicago, with the bar and the music. The Chop
House has a cigar room. You can go down there with all of the old
gladiators and listen to the war stories."
But Mac's not averse to something more refined, meaning the
multicourse, bank-account-busting culinary extravaganza, either.
"Trotter's, yeah," he says, referring to Charlie Trotter's, the
pioneering new American restaurant that specializes in infinite
small dishes with gigantic taste. "The
food does not stop and is so
great, and the service is so tremendous, and the conversation is so
elite," he says. "I'm telling you, man, you are in for a
treat."
Sated by steak, we step into midnight seeking action, seeking jazz.
Mac's with me now. I can see it in his eyes, big as full moons, as
we float through Chicago like characters out of one of those
black-and-white movies where the nightclub neon magically blinks
'Welcome' from all sides. Mac used to love to go to Milt Trenier's,
a nightclub founded by the famous singer who, along with his three
brothers, performed with
Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. "I used
to rent their club out on Tuesday nights and have Bernie Mac's
Smooth Jazz and Comedy," he says. "People would get off work, go to
the restaurant at 4, wine until 7, and the show started at 7:30.
That was one of the greatest times in my life."