I think the mark of a true gourmand is their willingness to get deep into the heart of the human appetite. It’s easy to love caviar-laced inflections of haute cuisine while sipping on a flute of Titanic-salvaged bubbly, but can you also roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty at two in the morning? Today we’re discussing the finer aspects of bar cuisine and some of my favorite spots for it.

[Also on City Weekend: The Best Friday Night All-you-can-eat Deals Around Town]

Bar food is not all created to be equal. There are a number of factors that contribute to the overall quality of your dive’s menu, like the freshness of ingredients and the skill of the chef, but these are generally hard to monitor from a wobbly barstool after eight pints. For new venues, I have a three-point French fry benchmark test. They’re generally cheap and you’d be surprised at how much you can learn from them.

The three-point French fry benchmark test

First, they had better be hot and fresh. My first bite should have me scrambling for a glass of something cold to cool down. Fried foods have a very short shelf life, and any spot that places any sort of emphasis on food knows this.

Second, good fries are not greasy. In fact, if done right, French fries are actually much lower in fat than their reputation suggests. Done right, all the moisture cooks out of a potato, creating the trademark bubbling in the deep fryer. If water is continuously exiting, there’s no space for oil to enter. Greasy fries means that they’ve been reheated in the oil again, the oil temperature was too low or the oil was too dirty―all bad omens.

Third is the taste test. Do they actually taste like potatoes? The vast majority of fries in the world are frozen (nothing wrong with that) but the more expensive ones will be tastier and crispier. Are your fries salted? Potatoes love salt and need it badly. If the chef is too lazy to salt their French fries, I generally don’t bother ordering anything else. Now, a great batch of fries doesn’t guarantee that the bar does everything well, but it does invite further investigation.

Great bar eats

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite bar eats: the cheeseburger at the Beaver, complete with an IV drip bag of ketchup, the fish and chips at The Camel, (open really, really late), the hot dogs and nachos and chili at Masse, and the surprising chicken wings at Party World KTV. Of course, there’s also the pizza at Velvet, the sandwiches at el Cóctel and most of the menu at the gastro pubs Alchemist and Apothecary.

This list is far from exhaustive, so if you have another fave, please let me know! I’m always on the prowl come 2am and nothing makes me happier than getting down with some good ol’ fashioned bar eats.

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When Austin Hu isn't busy writing City Weekend's The Dish blog, he runs things over at Madison. Check out more of his articles here.