Cleo’s

What a dump. Smoky, even though there’s no smoking in IL restaurants. Seedy clientele. I want to give NO stars, but the system won’t let me.

Cleo’s is a dive bar — not a restaurant.
They’re nice, beer’s cheap. What more do you want?
They got food, and it is not their core competency, but sometimes, it’s pretty darn good.

On our last afternoon visit to Cleo’s, we were lured in by a sign out front that advertised, «Tacos 50 cents». Inside the place was vacant save for a disheveled man sitting at the bar watching game shows on the bar TV. Come to find out he was our server and cook for the afternoon! He seemed inebriated as he shuffled over to take our order. If I had to guess, he was the barfly that was there every morning anyway, so they just gave him a job and all he could drink while working for pay.
The advertised tacos were simply beans out of slow cooker and a dingy topping station on a back table. Instead, we did what you normally do in a suspect establishment and ordered hamburgers. To drink I ordered a Stag beer on draft. Stag is for the refined cheap beer drinker. It tastes much better than the frat-​boys’ Natty Light and the hipsters’ PBR.
Our burgers were served accompanied by dingy, industrial sized bottles of mustard and ketchup. You had to knock the crust off the nozzle to get them to pour. We opted to eat our burgers plain. The burgers themselves were not terrible, proving that you can make a good burger even when over the legal limit.