Korner House Elk Grove 9/23

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/

As the 2009 Chicago riding season winds down, we’re faced with shorter days and earlier nightfall. With that in mind, we decided to start this month’s Wednesday Night Ride at 7:00PM instead of 7:30, and also decided we’d ride a route that was more city streets than woods.

With the start time set and the desire to ride through well-lit urban streets, all we needed was a destination. We wanted to try a place we’d never been before and saleman Kenn Hartmann stepped up with a great suggestion: Korner House Bar & Grill in Elk Grove Village Illinois.

I decided to stop there for lunch to check the place out before our ride and met the owner, Basil, and the manager, Chrissy, who’s been working there over 30 years. Korner House is a comfortable, biker-friendly place with great food and great atmosphere. After lunch, I rode back along our proposed route, in reverse, to check for road closures and dangerous conditions (and found just a couple.)

That evening, at the shop, we were delighted to have 75 riders show up for our ride! We left the shop in three groups and zig-zagged our way north through the western suburbs of Forest Park, River Forest and Schiller Park all the way to Irving Park Road.

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ftzdomino/

One of the highlights of our ride was the ‘ghost town’ just south of O’Hare: blocks of commercial and residential buildings left vacant due to the airport expansion. Over the past few years, the City of Chicago has purchased nearly 500 homes & businesses in Bensenville for the O’Hare Modernization Program. Right now, the majority of the buildings are still standing, but abandoned, making for a very spooky scene.

Korner House Road Sign

When we arrived at the Korner House, we were greeted by Basil who set us up with a couple hundred tenderloin sliders and more hot wings than I care to count. The great service and friendly people made Korner House an outstanding destination for us and we’ll be sure to visit again in the future.

Korner House Bar & Grill
2736 East Higgins Rd
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
(847) 296-4165‎

See you on October 28th for our last ride of the season.


If you’d like to follow the route we took to the Korner House, you can download the route sheet.