Shawn’s Recommendations:
Promontory Point
Summer and early fall in Chicago are like a fever dream. Chicago residents spend nine windy months in shades of grey, then suddenly the city reminds them that it can still clean up nicely when it wants to. Promontory Point is Hyde Park’s crown jewel during the warm weather reprieve. A park jutting into Lake Michigan, it’s accessible by a relaxing bike ride or a hand-in-hand walk east of campus.
By day, you can hurl yourself into the cold, fresh water of the lake, drying off on limestone blocks warmed by the sun. By night, it changes entirely. Enjoy bonfires, banter, and the skyline glowing across the water. It’s raw and elemental, a place where first meetings linger longer than you imagined and first kisses taste faintly of smoke and lake spray.
The Pub
Beneath the old gothic stone of Ida Noyes Hall lurks the Pub, a place you don’t and can’t (for the underaged) stumble into by accident. This is where you test your date’s character. Can they order a decent pint? Do they queue songs on the jukebox with reckless abandon? Can they laugh when you demolish them at foosball?
The Pub is dimly lit, slightly aged, and unpretentious in a way that makes you grateful for its existence. It has two dozen beers on tap, neon signs, and board games that still carry the memory of unfinished matches of a thousand students before you. If hunger strikes, the food won’t win awards, but, like all the best bar grub, it’ll soak up whatever bad decisions you and your date will be making after a couple of drinks.
Harper Café
If the Pub is for the nights you might forget, Harper Café is for the mornings you hope to remember. Tucked on the third floor of Harper Memorial Library, the coffee shop is lined with shelves of old books that loom over your shoulder like late assignments pushed off for another day. Coffee here feels different, I promise: intimate and cloistered, a drink that insists on conversation.
There’s something picturesque about the place: study buddies bent over mugs, lulls in conversation punctuated by the turning of pages or the clacking of keyboards, the shared warmth of caffeine and warm morning light. It’s the perfect venue for the academic first date dance: study together, maybe flirt through the pretense of productivity if you’re brave, then, when the books are closed, drop the lingering question: “So… shall we do this again?”
Nolan’s Recommendations:
Court Theatre
It won the Tony Award for Best Regional Theatre in the country in 2022, but it’s been putting on incredible productions (and serving as a great date spot) for much longer than that. It’s a packed upcoming season for Court Theatre, featuring four exciting shows, including the world premiere of a musical by UChicago’s own professor Leslie Buxbaum.
An hour prior to any weekday performance, show up with your UCID and pick up a free rush ticket. Then grab a quick bite at The Nile or Baker Dining Hall. After the show, head to Insomnia Cookies for a post-show dessert. Pro tip: Actors usually mingle in the lobby for a few minutes following performances. This unique opportunity is perfect if you want to fawn over the actors or ask them questions, and you can impress your date with this knowledge!
Logan Center
You happen to sign up for the Logan Center newsletter during an O-Week fair, and your inbox soon becomes inundated with messages. Temporary annoyance gives way to excitement: an abundance of weekly free concerts and events, perfect for a lively date, awaits.
Show up to the Logan Center an hour or so before the event and grab a drink or food at Café Logan. It’s the perfect spot for a first date: there’s plenty of seating, an interesting rotating exhibit on the walls, and it’s the only on-campus cafe that serves alcohol! For after the show, here are two well-known secrets: a scintillating collection of Henri Matisse’s Jazz prints is displayed across the Logan Center’s basement, and the Logan Center staff rarely kicks students out after hours. Explore the whole building (which has some of the best views of campus) with your date, then take a romantic walk along the Midway. Pro tip: Café Logan features free jazz shows on the third Tuesday of every month. Also, for those concerts that do cost money, UChicago Presents offers a limited number of free, donor-sponsored tickets to students.
Café 53
What’s better than a great first date? Maybe a great sandwich. Find both at Café 53, which serves up some of the best sandwiches around, as well as gelato, coffee, and excellent vegan options.
On the way to the café from campus, take a walk through Nichols Park. It’s a lovely community space that includes a garden. After your meal, walk around 53rd Street, Hyde Park’s most active retail corridor. Explore small businesses like Hyde Park Records, and check out the former Hyde Park–Kenwood National Bank Building, an almost 100-year-old Classical Revival beauty that is now a Chicago landmark. Pro tip: Hidden in the back of Café 53 is a sizable patio, where you can find love and enjoy the fleeting Chicago fall weather.
Elizabeth’s Recommendations:Â
Jackson Park
Nothing is more romantic than a walk around a beautiful garden—and none is more beautiful or historic than Jackson Park, located just east of campus. Designed in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the designers of New York’s Central Park, it boasts more than 500 acres of stunningly designed gardens and parks, of which the most gorgeous is the Japanese Garden. If you prefer a more active first date, fear not: The park features basketball and tennis courts so you and your sweetheart can play your hearts out.
Strings Ramen
In a world that needs more mood lighting conducive to romance, Strings Ramen has it all—alongside delicious homemade noodles. An underrated spot in the heart of 53rd Street, Strings is an intimate first date spot. Share some appetizers with your partner: the vegetable gyoza, the wood ear salad, or the crispy pork skin. Or, if you and your date are feeling fiery, try the Hell Ramen, complete with chili oil and all sorts of hot peppers. For those who are not as adventurous, the tonkotsu ramen with pork belly is perfectly savory and delicious.
Jimmy’s
We’ve all been there: you aren’t sure whether your first date is actually a first date. Where do you take the object of your affection? Well, look no further than Jimmy’s (otherwise known as the Woodlawn Tap). A classic neighborhood haunt, it’s the perfect place to grab cocktails and some fries to share with your date-not-date. The small tables also make it easy to flirtingly touch the your date’s arm to signal interest. Many UChicago students have reported falling in love here—so could you!
Emily’s Recommendations:
Powell’s Books
Scavenge for cheap coursebooks and test your date’s knowledge of 18th-century German philosophy (or whatever gets you going) at Powell’s Books. The oldest sibling of Hyde Park’s bookstore trifecta, it carries thousands of titles slotted in stuffed shelves, categorized and sub-categorized by academic niche. Bonus: if the date is going well, add on brunch at Salonica, a Greek diner down the street with consummate French toast.
Renaissance Society
Cobb Hall isn’t just for drip coffee and language classes—on the fourth floor, you can find the Renaissance Society, a cavernous, whitewashed room home to a rotating cast of art installations and concerts. A film by Diego Marcon is on view this fall, along with several shows by current composers that will give you plenty to ruminate on. Should you both have an abiding interest in contemporary art, sign up for the Society’s Student Committee for behind-the-scenes invitations to artist talks, gallery walks, and forays into the Society’s century-old archives.
Rockefeller Chapel
Named after the University’s generous benefactor John D. Rockefeller Sr., Rockefeller Chapel is dedicated not to any one religion, but to the spiritual task of learning. After the Aims of Education address caps off O-Week under the Chapel’s vaulted ceiling, it keeps its doors open for weekly events: afternoon tea, yoga, meditation. The pièce de résistance is its carillon tour, held Tuesday through Friday until November. Not for the faint of heart (or calves, for the tower boasts 271 steps), the tour takes you through the history of the building and its carillon. At the top, you’ll find a panoramic view of the campus’s red roofs and, northward, over the heads of saints perched atop the 207-foot tower, Chicago’s skyline.
