Boltini Lounge

A pretty nice place with some fancy cocktails. Of course, the prices are high but that’s what you get when you go to a martini lounge.

Hate to say it, but I’ve noticed a decrease in quality here — this is probably more like a 3.5, truth be told. I would never come in just for their food, but as a snacking option that has slipped. And I just don’t think my cocktails have been as good lately as they were when past bartenders prepared them — not quite as full, not quite as tasty. I’m not willing to give up on them yet — a guy still needs a Hot n Dirty Martini on a Friday once in a while — but I do notice that this has now slid into me «B» List of places I want to go.

pros: They had a huge selection of drinks, tiramisu martini was good. Drinks were strong.
cons: the service was VERY slow and food wasn’t good. We sat down and ordered two drinks and buffalo chicken dip. They took more than 20 mins to bring out the drinks. Also, the buffalo dipping sauce wasn’t enough. It ran out before we even finished half the chips. Pepperoni pizza definitely tasted like cheap frozen pizza.

If I could rate this place a negative I totally would! Do not come here if you are looking to be ignored and having to hunt down staff/​bartenders.
I understand that Champaign is a small town with literally nothing to do but come on now! My boyfriend and I drove down to visit his son that attends UIUC. After having a horrible dinner we decided to stop at this place. The only reason we stopped here was because it looked cozy from the outside and it was right next to our hotel. Now I liked the décor and the people that were in there were just «ok».
This is were this place screwed up and pissed me off !!!
1. We sat at the bar and it was a pretty slow night. WE WERE IGNORED BY THE RUDE A$$ BARTENDER!
2. I had to catch an attitude to get his attention and after that he was still a d&#%!
3. He SNATCHED my credit card out of my hand to open a tab — NO! DONT EVER SNATCH ANYTHING THATS MINE OUT OF MY HAND
4. He was pissed because I requested Titos vodka in my Cosmopolitan — how do I know? He looked at me, rolled his eyes, threw cup the old vodka was in, looked at me again, said something bitchy under his breath, aggressively grabbed the Titos bottle and then charged me for drinking a Cosmopolitan that tasted like baby juice.
5. HIS NAME IS VERY INSIGNIFICANT AND IRRELEVANT BUT HE WAS WORKING (Saturday, March 8^th at 9:30 pm)
I can’t believe the nasty attitudes and horrible customer service I have received in this place. I wasn’t asking to have my ass kissed; all I wanted was a drink and enjoy my time. What really surprised me was that another PAYING client wanted to order a drink and he had to literally get nasty with the staff and bartenders to get anyone’s attention. I thought I was nasty and bitchy but clearly this is what they do at this bar.
Every single person that was behind this bar on March 8^th, needs to be severely disciplined. You work in the service industry and should never act towards your clients the way they’ve acted this night.
I will never ever come back to this place and I will tell everyone!

My girlfriends and I come in every other Tuesday night for Trivia Tuesday! (They do trivia every Tuesday at 7:00, and we all love Holly and Chris!) Great place to meet up with friends for drinks! It’s very small and cozy. We don’t usually order food because they serve free pizza for the night; however, we do order our fair share of drinks for the night :)
They offer a good variety of mixed drinks, but their wine selection is pretty limited.
Love this lounge!

My drink, pumpkin spice latte martini, was awesome. Husband’s wine had gone bad & the spinach dip was not tasty at all. Don’t go by the menu on Unilocal.Current menu is tiny & not worth it. If you want hard liquor, this is the place. Otherwise, there are plenty of places within walking distance to get GREAT wine & AWESOME food.

You are a prominent bar in downtown Champaign. Why are you serving lousy chips out of a bag and bad salsa out of a jar?

A cool lounge with an enormous drink menu. The one on their website doesn’t even scratch the surface.
I had something called a lime ku-​ade and it was solid, if unremarkable. I hit a home run with my second drink, a lemonade concoction that was equal parts boozy and smooth. I expected to find it on their website, but it’s not there.
Our server was nice and prompt and had several recommendations for our group.
Wasn’t a fan of the layout. It’s just a long bar with a few booths. Our booth faced the door to the kitchen, so the dark atmosphere was frequently punctured by the bright light of the kitchen. That’s a small drawback.
If you’re in this part of town, it’s worth dropping in for a killer cocktail.

I really enjoy this place. It’s low-​key and upscale. Drinks are expensive but they’re made on the strong side. The food is really go too. I’ve never had a dish I didn’t enjoy.
It’s a great place to sit down and enjoy a cocktail and have a conversation. The crowd looks like 26 and up. I consistently have a positive experience here.

I can really only rate on drinks. Good bar staff that makes one feel comfy and good. They make a quality drink, and have a damn good pour going on. I’m not talking about a crazy large pour that is borderline theft, i’m talking a quality pour. I will check out some food one of these days. The tunes can be a bit busy sometimes. Good to see Boltini still doing it’s thing.

Favorite place to go out for drinks in Champaign! Fun atmosphere and great wait staff. Wednesday and Thursday half price martinis!

It’s a bit expensive and often crowded, and the booze can be low-​quality (they recently switched from Beefeater to New Amsterdam as their well gin). Now that that’s out of the way, the praise:
Oh man, is the décor great. This place has wonderful ambiance, with great service and fantastic staff. The food’s only okay (I liked the chicken quesadila but not a lot), but it’s pretty cheap and, honestly, you don’t come to Boltini for the food. You come for the cocktails. The martinis are great, and if you don’t like vodka martinis, there are plenty of great drinks on the menu (personally, I get dirty martinis and Old Fashioned when I don’t want to drink sugary stuff). The bar is gorgeous, and they almost always have some sort of music, whether it’s a live DJ or a guy and a keyboard (okay, that’s not always the best sort of thing).
The specials are also fantastic; Wednesdays feature half-​price cocktails, and Thursdays feature half price martinis. While I wish they’d tell me what qualifies as a «martini,» I’m not going to complain. $ 15 can get you three really good drinks and a very strong buzz.

A group of us have been coming to Champaign for our work to do some concentrated training 1−2x/month so we wanted to start checking out the local, non-​college scene. We checked out Boltini twice, each time deciding on Wed. since it’s their half-​price-​drink night.
The first try was a few weeks ago and relatively early in the night I guess (9pm). We all, especially me, really liked the place itself; a loungey, chill vibe. I’m not a beer guy so I was very pleased with their great drink selections AND all ½ price! I thought this was a sure winner.
It was kinda slow, and the main reason we left that time after only one drink was that the demographics threw us off. After some shifting during the 20mins. or so, there ended up being 5 couples there: all same-​sex, 4 of the 5 were guys. Being new to the area, we didn’t know if we found ourselves in a gay bar. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not conducive to keeping single straight guys around.
This past week we came back because I was assured that it was a place open to all, so I talked the others into trying it again. On this, our second attempt (and third; we ended up coming back later), we got there around 10pm. It was later than the last time so I expected a bit more of a crowd. I guess that’s my only complaint about this place. We gave it more of a chance, sticking around for just under an hour. It was worthwhile, but just not getting as active as we hoped. It did seem to start to shift as we were heading out, but he others had decided to move on.
We ended up back there an hour later. The scene was about the same as when we were leaving; still just on the brink of happenin’. We stayed for about 45min, and I easily could have spent the rest of the night there but the others wanted to go back to the clubby place we closed at on our previous night.
When we go back next week I think I WILL be sticking around if the vibe is right letting the others move on. I really want to love this place cuz it has all the right attributes for me (almost). Here’s to hoping my next review will be 5 stars!

HH declared his drink one of the best martinis of his life. Grilled dates wrapped in bacon to die for. Nice find in Champaign.

I love cocktails, and small plate restaurants, so I was very excited to try Boltini. I was unfortunately disappointed by the food. There was nothing wrong with the dishes per se, but there was definitely not anything remarkable. For the portions they were definitely not worth the price. The flavors tended to be fairly bland, and I was really not impressed. The presentation was well done, however.
On another note, the martinis were great, and reasonably priced. I got a dirty martini, and substituted Stolichnaya for the Svedka, and it turned out really well. The waiter forgot to specify the vodka change on the second round, and while service was slow, the food came fast once the order was in.
The experience was not unpleasant, but I doubt I’ll be back. There are better places elsewhere in downtown Champaign.

Classy bar hidden in a small town.
Came here during the weekday, we ordered a hummus plate, the fancy mac n cheese, 2 bottles of veuve cliquot and a some mixed drinks and shots. Everything was great and the staff are a group of really chill and fun people. I definitely recommend this place, especially if you’re a student at uiuc and want to get away from the frat bars on campus.

Jelly donut shots, ooooo! O_​O Ah-​mazing. Dips were delicious, we got the basil pesto and the tomato one. They have a huge selection of shots and other drinks (I’m a shots person, get the job done with as little pain and time involved ;-))
The ambiance is nice, and if you have a group of 5 or more and can snag some couches/​chairs in the back I can guarantee you’ll be there a while. It’s so comfy and cozy. A wonderful place to go with friends.

Possibly the best food in town hidden away in a classy bar. You can never go wrong with catering from Boltini’s for your event; given the quality of the food and chef’s ability to present, I think you could even use them at an upscale wedding and be quite happy!
Also, props for being an Illinois Green-​Certified Business!

Kind of a dark place to be. The building is long and skinny. When we walked in we were not greeted in a friendly manner actually we were not greeted at all. We noticed there were reserved signs on all the tables that had daylight on them so we were directed to the back where they have creepy crescent shaped booths.
They have daily specials and the special was $ 5 cosmos so we all ordered one. It was really good and really strong! One is all you need. We also ordered the margherita pizza, artichoke dip & the fancy mac & cheese. The pizza was good, the dip was fabulous and the mac & cheese was gross. I do not know why they called it fancy mac & cheese. The noodles were too big and chewy and the cheese did not have any flavor. It was bland and boring and sticky. Nothing fancy about it all so that was misleading.
The dip had some hotness to it and had good flavor and consistency. None of the food came out hot. The pizza cheese was luke warm at best so I think it was sitting in the kitchen waiting to be brought out for a while.
Our waitress was really nice and very helpful with helping us select menu items.
Would I go back? Yes, I would go back and try something different and hopefully we could sit somewhere towards the front and the light of day. This place is really dark.

Been here plenty of times before my last visit and I promise you after Monday night, I will NEVER be back. Our waitress, Sarah, I think, was TERRIBLE. We sat down at one of the small tables and it was much smaller than we thought so I asked her if she had a bigger table… she pointed to her left and looked that way pretty much saying «that way»…okay fine… our entire service she seemed really standoffish and not willing to get into the service. We asked her questions about a certain dish, she just stared at us as though we should know what it was and said «its just 6 pieces on there»…
Then everything came out nice that we ordered, except my friends tapas dish. It wasnt even hot at all. So he told the waitress that he no longer wanted it and if he could order something else (this is when the attitude sparked ALL the way up). She began to question him as to why he didnt like it, and what he didnt like about it and this and that. After he stated that it was cold (for the 10^th time) she said we can reheat it in the oven but he cannot have anything else. I got the manager.
(Come on now, Ive been to OLIVE GARDEN, and had better service… they are always willing to switch something out if its cold or you do not like it, even though the reason he didnt want it was because it came out cold and unappetizing)
When I got the manager she was really nice to me at the bar, but before she could get back to our table, our waitress talked to her. Which resulted in the manager now having an attitude with us. Mind you, it was 5 of us so they can all attest to this and will NOT be returning either, and we have told all of our friends as well.
Why the manager was arguing with us, I WILL NEVER KNOW.
very long story short, good drinks, terrible service, and even worse management.
Honestly, servers can act that way, hey you never know who is having a bad night, but management SHOULD NEVER EVER act that way.