Maple Avenue Pub

Ok sooooo if you’re from Lisle or lived in lisle at any point, you know already that people in Lisle are just plain friendly and gosh darn delightful. Sooooo if you come to a dive bar in Lisle most likely you’ll run into some genuinely cool and friendly people. What’s not to like? There’s a cage, there’s a stage, there’s sports on a big screen or music. You can get a decent martini or a nice cold pitcher of beer. If you want to dance, there’s a jukebox or a dj. A good time can be had by all (as long as you’re over 21).

I have been going to maple for about just over a year now, every experience it continues to get better and better. The staff is all amazing, and they have good drink prices and food options. I love everything about this place and will always highly recommend it.

This is typically what you wold expect from a suburban bar. Nothing special a d a very aged g structure and clientele who thinks playing Def Leopard on juke box is happening.

This is a neighborhood dive bar so any high expectations = need to get over yourself! Come in, hang with the regulars — enjoy life, the staff is awesome and there is not employee turn around here so you can find the same faces who will get to know you if you don’t have a stick up ur butt — they have standard drinks and fair prices, good specials and nice pub food. Maple has become a home away from home for friends of mine and I always like visiting for good times in a casual no frills atmosphere! Lisa is the server who is always upbeat and hustling to make sure you get hydrated and is one of the best I have ever seen in the business.

When ranking local watering holes I feel that Maple Avenue is very near the top.
It is a place that has many regulars that have been going to «the Map» for years. But also a steady amount of college kids and 30 something’s.
Servers, bartenders and owners are locals from waaaaayy back. They are friendly, accommodating and will remember your name.

Awesome staff and owner of MAP, these folks make everyone feel welcome and are so amazingly polite to customers and potential customers who come by. Stopped by to get my hands on CHIVE Lager (aka KCCO Black) which had premiered in Chicago that weekend with the CHIVE crew around the area. Got hold of two bottles to try and it was amazing beer.

When I moved out of the city out to Lisle and saw this place, I thought for sure it would be the next bar I’d frequent often. Not the case, in fact I don’t frequent ANY bar in the area often though this does remind me of the local bars on the NW side of the city… far from classy, but not too trashy. This also reminds me of a college town kind of bar with great cheap drink specials during the week, and it fits the mold with Benedictine down the street though I have no idea what the specials are. This is about one step down from the Lodge in Four Lakes to give an idea of the ambiance in this place.
I’m only giving this a low rating because it’s just not my kind of place. I’ve been here one and only one time so far but I may need to visit again on some random night to see if my opinion changes. Who knows… I may fall in love with this place, or the cage that you can dance in turned me off for good.
Yes, it’s in a strip mall with a massage parlor, late night taco joint, nail salon, etc, also known as «Unincorporated Lisle» Not that it makes a difference. There are no frills here on a Friday night, just your typical bar… I’ve noticed they SOMETIMES have live music so I might have to try that.

It’s not a dive bar. It’s a dump. Visit if you like cheap drinks and don’t care how an owner runs his business. It says its a sports bar but I didn’t see a Monday night football crowd or an ALCS crowd either. Brutal management. Never trust a manager that wears a 10 gallon hat in ILLINOIS. It’s only a matter of time before this place runs out of money or the health department shuts it down.

I’ve been here for a few shows and the sound is good and LOUD. Did I say loud? really loud. If that’s not your thing, don’t go on a night a band is playing. The selection and prices of beer and drinks is good.

Another trip to the ol’ Maple Avenue Pub last night that didn’t fail to disappoint. We were there with a friend’s co-​worker who was in town from the UK –and– it was his birthday. Where do you get a better slice of Americana outside of a Sizzler than a dive-​y suburban bar? I do not know.
Bartenders were friendly as ever, the clientele was as unusual as they usually are, and Thursday night $ 3 wells had us drinking all night for next to nothing. I still haven’t managed to make it here for a karaōke night, but that is high up on my personal to do list.

One of my favorite bars in the suburbs by far. The staff is very friendly, one of the best I’ve ever come into contact with. Drinks are very reasonably priced and the patrons are very friendly. Can’t really ask for much more than that.

This is an interesting bar. I think at one point they were going for a jungle theme, but that was lost and now it is just a dive. There is a ton of seating, a big bar and plenty to do here. One of their biggest downfalls would probably be the lack of adequate parking.
Basic drinks were pretty cheap. One bottle of beer and a vodka sprite came out to 7.75 but I don’t exactly know the breakdown. They have hilariously overpriced drink specials. Who in their right mind would pay $ 6 for a shot of Rumpleminze?
This is a fun place to hang out, but the demographics were weird. When we arrived at 9 this place was a biker bar with classic rock. About an hour later the music was like listening to B-​96 in 1996. An hour after that the DJ was now playing house music with the respective videos up on the monitor. Maybe that was just a Friday night thing, but I will stick to the pool table side of the bar.

A friend entered into multi-​round karaōke contest at Maple Avenue Pub which congregated every weekend for an entire month. When he made it past the first two rounds, our mutual friends took notice and started cheering him on during the third week of competition.
After besting some up-​and-​commers the third week, he progressed to the finals, which just so happened to be thrown on his birthday! With about a dozen friends and just as pitchers of suds, how could he not win? Well, the American Idol style judges were less stuck by our friend’s riveting performance of Louis Armstrong’s «Its a Wonderful World», than by some girl that screeched a forgettable S. Twain song?!
Life is not fair.
On the flip side, we had some tasty burgers, the pitchers were refilled promptly and the guy who tended the bar was friendly, fast and funny. We had a fantastic night there and would be glad to return if only we could hold the judges hostage should any more karaōke competitions rob our star in the making!

I tend to like going to bars less and less and prefer to have friends at my place to drink. But when I do go out this is the kind of place I like. It’s a dive! Anything more than that is more than I want.
Most of the people that work there are great. The others I just don’t know well enough.
They have DJs a couple nights a week and if you’re lucky a live band. There are a couple pool tables a few dart boards, indoor bags and some video games.
The food is pretty good and the menu is fairly broad. They used to have great pizza, then they had crap, but now the pizza is good again. Not back to great but what can you do.
They have a VIP room that you can rent for parties. There are a couple of couches and tables and a TV.
All in all, not a bad dive in my neck of the woods!

Here are my reasons for giving this dive a 4 star.
2 stars – because they support my work and host a fundraiser for us. Thank you very much! so stop judging me and thinking I’m white trash.
1 star– because once a month a group of my friends find it necessary to meet here have a drink or 10.
1 star – for the bartender Daigon (sp?) and for the new sweet waitress we had last week. And for the fact that they have flavored vodkas.
The drinks are good but the scenery is far from good it could possibly be considered creepy or scary but since I’m always with a group of peeps its ok. The food is no better than your typical bar food.

Okay, this is a place I would normally be afraid to enter since you can’t really see inside and it shares a strip mall space with a laundromat and a tattoo parlor… which in the suburbs, is what we call a «rough patch». You need not worry though, this place is as «local watering hole» as it gets.
My first time here was with my main girl, Alicia B. They hold an annual fundraiser for Willowbrook Wildlife Haven, a rehab and learning center for local wildlife. How could I not support such a great cause? Automatic 4 stars!
And though the parking lot is a mess and some of the patrons are little on the stare-​y side, if you go with a group and you’ll have a swell time.
PS– The bartenders are great and won’t skimp on the booze.

..allergic to your goatee since 2010… i am a fan of maple ave pub. better known as «maple».better than jukebox sat night… better than zookeepers. maple is a community favorite. the waitresses come and go, normally stay and hang out though long after they work there. its a family run bar… a little bit of chicago. in the suburbs. the food is pretty damn good and the staff knows everybody and treats em that way. if you arent having a great time its prob because you take yourself too seriously. this is a cut loose kind of place. get crazy. have a good time. its a blue collar bar… not a spa. love it.

Were I to start a website with the intent to compile a list of diabolically bad bars, this would probably be my first entry. This bar needs an enema. Stat.
The only reason I’ve had to set foot in here over the last few years has been UFC pay-​per-​view broadcasts attended by close friends who are there to support other friends and their MMA-​related business venture, but that is no longer enough to get me in the door. Some nights there’s a cover, some nights not, but that I ultimately leave annoyed by bar, staff, and patrons is a given.
Logistically speaking, Maple Ave Pub is a nightmare. Bathrooms are essentially located right next to the kitchen, with the main cooler/​freezer/​storage area next to that, so there’s often an employee darting in and out of there and weaving his way through the, um, crowd. It all makes for a lot of jostling and disruption, and it’s just a badly laid out bar.
In the summer, Maple Avenue Pub is passable, but only because it’s generally dead save for some who appear to be rotgut regulars. Come fall through spring it’s teeming with the braintrust from Benedictine University, perhaps a generous helping of IQ-​draining North Centralites, with the dregs of Lisle interspersed throughout. I can genuinely feel my IQ slip a few points each time I set foot inside the building during the school year. Cheap kids there for not-​so-​cheap drinks paid for on mommy or daddy’s credit line, using cheap pickup lines on girls (I can’t bring myself to say women) who are either too drunk or too stupid to know the difference.
And then there’s the staff… Before I go to the negatives, it must be said that the bartenders here are actually quite attentive. In fact, they’re probably M.A.P.‘s lone bright spot. They’re not doing much beyond slinging beer, simple mixed drinks, and shots, but when I’ve been at the bar proper I’ve never had to wait an exorbitant amount of time for my order to be taken, so good on them.
But the waitstaff… these people *really* need a better system for waiting tables. I have witnessed and experienced two or three people covering one table, and when they all figure out this is happening, they basically stop waiting on people. Service is nothing short of bad. Order a drink, finish it and want another? Be prepared to wait. And wait. And then wait some more. And then take matters into your own hands by going to the bar. And if you happen to be there to watch a fight or a sporting event, you will quickly notice that waitstaff’s only perceptible talent is their collective ability to magically appear and park themselves right in front of people’s sight lines. Definitely a good way for them to endear themselves to patrons.
And then there’s the DJ. This man is a bonafide idiot who feels the need to a) add a soundtrack to televised events, b) speak over or give commentary about on-​screen action, and c) regularly drops statements so banal they’re an insult to non sequiturs. Bad music, bad timing, and tragically bad personality. I’m going on record and suggesting Laryngectomy, because maybe DJ F@#*head would be more tolerable if he had a voicebox instead of sounding like the creepy old guy at the club.
The bottom line is that Maple Avenue Pub, at best, is a poorly run college bar. If I had the wherewithal, I’d buy it, close it, gut it, and start all over again. Save your time, save your money, and head somewhere else, for without doubt, this is the armpit of Lisle, IL.

This place has gone through numerous name and façade changes. When I was a kid I think the place was called Juke Box Saturday night and had a car driving into the top of the building?
Now the place is a total McPoyle bar. It was good for a beer and a laugh before I had to get the hell out of there.

This place is just weird. I guess it used to be called Zookeepers, and it still looks like a zoo in there. Cages. Bars on the stage, as if orangutans should be up there swinging. They have fake rock everywhere, like you would see little animal habitats. And it’s a sports bar. The fake rock — maybe it’s just hard to remove and they didn’t want to deal with it. I guess on the really-​hopping nights girls go up on stage and dance. Go ahead, if that’s your thing.
Oh, I’ve been there 3 times. First time was OK, probably like 4 years ago. Went again, probably 3 years ago, and dudes were prancing around in thongs. If I remember right, I had to pay to get in. Why? Make the girls pay to see that shit. You should pay ME $ 5 for me to come into your bar when dudes are wearing banana-​hammocks all over the place.
Third time was last night, and I will say that I had a good time, probably because it was for a friend’s birthday. I was starving, so I grabbed a menu. I scoped out the menu online before I went, just in case it looked «meh» and would rather stop at Taco Hell on my way there.
Menu looked OK, so I opted for a burger. Pretty darn good. Only thing I didn’t like was the quarter-​onion they put on there. No joke, it was probably ¾ inch thick. It DID come in handy as a nice little platform to put the ketchup for my fries. It would probably work as a good frisbee too.
The service was pretty good, our server was nice and attentive. Bartenders were also friendly as well. I’d probably go back, but I’ll call first to make sure there aren’t any dudes wearing butt floss first.