Madison Bear Garden

I love this place and have since 1979! Looks & smells the same after all these years! Yesterday my daughter and I visited at around 3pm. All the staff were friendly and helpful and the best part was they were playing 80’s rock and roll music. So it was like a step back in time. Love the outdoor seating too. Whenever any of my family members come from out of town, this is the place they want to go for the best burgers in town!

The food is overpriced and not that great. Really uneven too. Sometimes I go and the food is decent and other times I wouldn’t feed it to my dog. Drinks are fine, but again not cheap.
Its a great place to meet up with friends and party though. Great interior.

I’m so in LOVE with The Bear! The food is great, the beer is always great, and its the perfect place to bring your friends or family who are non-​local. The atmosphere is fun, every time I go in I see something I hadn’t noticed before, great place to play I Spy ;) You can spend a good hour or so looking at ALL the cool and random stuff on the walls, ceiling, and top of tables. Don’t forget to go check up stairs, dancing and pool tables! Its a must go.

Good burgers. The buns are always soggy though. They rinse their lettuce but never dry it before putting it on the burger. Great place to hangout at night

I love this restaurant! All of the old time Chico décor items suspended from the ceiling are really cool. Their Sierra Nevada on-​tap beer is super-​cold. Try the burger basket special and get it with bleu cheese as your cheese choice and add bacon. Really good! This restaurant and bar is true college-​town Chico, but is also a great place to bring out-​of-​town visitors and even for us ‘boomers’ who were college students awhile ago! Moved away, but I plan to visit «The Bear» every time I visit Chico.

Cheap pub grub and one of the most obnoxious settings in town.
Drunk frat boys, horny overweight cougars and other assorted riff raff replete with bad taste.
Enjoy

This place is a good too in Chico, ca. Very unique looking place with a sense of community. All the food is amazing with a fun atmosphere. The food takes a while to be ready though. I was there this week and it took 45 minutes for them to call my name.

I love the bear. I’m not a Chico local, but when ever I come into the bear I get this feeling like I am. Nothing beats the sports bar atmosphere here, other places can try… But cannot compete. The bear is awesome, they have specials for every day of the week, and every single one is delicious. Burger madness is probably the most common people enjoy, but you can pretty much get anything here. The bear bacon burger is my personal favorite, along with some of the BBQ sauce that is on the table it is a match made in heaven. And every burger comes with a choice of fries or salad so either way you are winning. They have a full bar and at 9:00 it turns into a club so the bear is pretty much your one stop shop for epicness in Chico if you are trying to get your grin on, or just chill. You won’t be disappointed at the bear. I mean I never have.

Great food & great atmosphere. I would recommend this to anybody looking for a good spot to hang out & drink with friends.

Didn’t try the food. Drank pitchers of beer to make up for it. All the random crap that hangs from the walls and ceiling make this a fun place to drink.
The beer prices are incredibly cheap or fair. The food is your typical bar fare staples. This is a total college bar, which isn’t a bad thing, just so people know what to expect when they get in.
The place is all self-​service. So grab/​fight for a table or barstool. Get food from the window by the front. Just don’t leave your table alone if you aren’t ready to leave. Unless you’re ready to fight a basic B /​overcompensating frat boy for it.

Don’t even bother go to the Banshee

They need to get some ventilation goin on upstairs on the dance floor… open a window or somethin lol Love this place though

Can’t visit Chico without going to the bear!
As someone who does not eat meat, I love that any of the burgers can be substituted for a veggie patty! Food is pretty inexpensive and always yummy! After 9pm is always fun for adults!

Cool joint. First time bar hopping in Chico and our buddy said that we had to check this place out. Five minutes in and I was in love. It looked like a TGIFriday’s interior decorator’s fever dream with all sorts of crazy stuff on the walls. They have beer, the have booze, they have food. What else do you want? It’s a college-​age crowd that’s looking to get tipsy. It was fun.

A very interest place to visit and food was great no calories count because the fries there taste like heaven mmmmmmm if my daughter goes to Chico University I will visit this place again and again

I grew up in Chico and went to collage here.
I came to the Bear a lot as a kid in the mid 70’s we were able to get into the; now-​locked-​until-​9PM magical upstairs. Back then we would spend all day playing pool and foos ball up there and maybe snag a coke from the unattended upstairs bar. as a kid it was like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio (probably why its closed during the day now)
Near as I can tell this is one of only 2 or 3 original bars in Chico that are still in place since the 70’s with the same name and motif the others are La Lalles and The Graduate which used to be my favorite lunch time burger place when I had my first business up here. but its changed hands and the food is different now.
The Bear, its has the same smells, the same looks, the same location and has the same food I remember. That energy is further drenched with dirty youthful exuberance of the staff, who are all college age and walk a fine line between pride in their establishment and nonchalance. It’s like a once beautiful and probably important building were occupied by squatters who didn’t give a hoot about anything in life but serving up large, tasty burgers.
Madison Bear Garden is the kind of eatery that has stood the test of time in Chico. It’s old and filled with odd décor, a dark and somewhat dingy interior and an overly-​complicated menu of gloriously greasy options. In short, it perfectly represents the college spirit of Chico.
The burgers (all served with curly fries) are all «Bear» themed and all worth trying. Options with toppings like chili, eggs and salsa can be ordered off the yellowing back-​lit menu in front of the counter.
Grab a cold beer from the bar and head out to enjoy your selection on the shaded and comically large back patio.
But don’t worry when your food is ready they shout your name over the loud speakers that can be heard over a full bar of people and echos through the place when its emptier.
For «the in the know crowd» you toss out a goofy name like superman or Luke Skywalker and they run with it when they call your order its pretty funny.
One of my daughters had
Pastrami Burger $ 9.99
It’s the Bear Burger topped with a mountain of grilled pastrami, Swiss cheese & spicy jalapeño cheese.
my other daughter had the Papa Bear $ 9.99
It’s the Bear Burger topped with cheddar cheese, crisp bacon strips, beer battered onion rings and our special Bear-​B-​Que sauce.
My wife had the Singin’ the Bleus Burger $ 9.89
Add bleu cheese crumbles, mayo and thick cut bacon to the World Famous Bear Burger!
I had The Great Bacon Burger $ 9.69
King of all burgers! Our classic burger with all the fixin’s plus your choice of cheese and a heapin’ helpin’ of bacon strips.
We got the Onion Rings $ 6.29
Beer battered and deep fried, an All-​American classic! for free as a Unilocal check in!
Glad I could share this place and some memories emphasis on «some» memories (it is a collage town) with my kids :)
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Yes, I’ve eaten here; about four times and always at the insistence of relatives. The food is simply okay. It’s the ambience that bothers me. Take the patio for instance; is smoking really permitted in a restaurant just because part of that restaurant is outside? Twice, I’ve seen smokers and smelled smoke in the patio. Besides the smoke, I don’t believe the place is clean. I’m sure they have a green card from the health department but how they got one is a mystery to me. In my opinion the place is dirty. Maybe it’s part of the décor? It’s fine to have a funky, quirky decoration theme. But it should be clean, inside and out, and it’s not.
I don’t know about you, but I form an opinion of a restaurant from my total experience there and not just the food. And that experience starts on the outside. If the outside of the building is dirty I start deducting ‘stars’ from a possible review before I even get in the door. Now it depends on the inside ambience and the food itself as to whether or not I would give it a good review. In the case of the Madison Bear Garden, the ambience and the food don’t save it from a one star experience. In my opinion, of course…
I just checked on the smoking regulations. Sad and twisted but yes, you can smoke in the patio of a restaurant if the owner allows it. With just 18% of the population (and dropping) smoking, I don’t understand why a restaurant would chance driving away any portion of the 82% non-​smokers just to satisfy the very small number of smokers. It baffles me.

Order at the counter and get your food and enjoy. They have a really good burger and if I wasn’t working I would’ve grabbed a beer or two. I came back here when I visited my friend when I was in college or maybe it was after. Either way a good sport for an affordable tasty burger! Also get the curly fries!

Love this place in Chico! No wonder it has been up since like the 60s. The food here is really good along with some unique burgers that are pretty good (The jiffy burger for example, sounds strange but its actually tasty). Thier events such as Karaōke night, the tricycle race are some of the fun things you can do at the place (certain nights of the week)
Up for a food/​drink challenge? you can do that here too. You can conquer the menu with the burger club and eat all the burgers to be a member (not all at once, over time) or you do the mug club where you have to drink 24 glass beer drinks to get served a mug at the the price of under $ 3.
Staring Thursday nights, they open the 2^nd floor and have a dancing stage. Its definitely a good place to start of your night but if you wanna dance dance, I would suggest moving on to the next place.
Awesome place, so many decorations! Every time I come back I always see something new. A must stop if you’re in Chico and I would recommend this place.

Oh the bear. From karaōke night to the burger specials, this place is every college kid’s wet dream. With the walls painted in chaos and the music always loud, it’s hard not to love the bear.
They have a dance floor upstairs with some pool tables and an additional bar. So don’t forget to make a trip up the stairs.
Any of their amazing burgers are well worth the price. I would highly recommend the «jiffy burger». Which has peanut butter on it and is surprising delicious.
They have an interesting assortment of special shots. Including the «Scooby snack». Which is a delicious mix of melon liqueur and other various alcoholic delights.
Within walking distance of all the other bars, it’s a great place to start off the night.