GiGi's Cocktail Lounge

While driving up the 101 for a birthday weekend in Ventura, I notice a sign that reads COCKTAILS.  I nudge my boyfriend, awakening him from his nap in the passenger's seat, and enthusiastically point at the discovery.

--Should we go?

--Yeah, let's go!

I pull off at the next exit, make a couple turns, and find the destination: GiGi's Cocktail Lounge.  Gigi's appears delightfully dangerous, nestled in an industrial part of Ventura with a parking lot full of dusty pickup trucks and a sign straight out of an eighties nail salon.

Without hesitation, we enter and make our way toward the far end of the bar.  The place is relatively busy for a Friday afternoon, with an eclectic crowd consisting of daytime-business drunks, geriatric drunks, and one sexually-confused soldier.

The bartender is a slow-moving and slow-speaking guy reminiscent of my grandpa, who welcomes us regardless of our 'you're-not-from-around-here' appearance.  We order up a couple of drinks and start discussing our plans for the remainder of the day.  Mere moments after serving up our beverages, Grandpa sets two shot glasses face down in front of us, and says "Drinks on Gladys".  He points to a tiny, Sofia Petrillo lookalike down at the other end of the bar and says, "She's the owner of this place."  What an honor to have THE Gigi buy us a round.

Before we are able to finish our drinks and redeem our free ones, the aforementioned soldier parks it next to us.  Wasted, he sputters 'You guys look great", and proceeds to tell us how he can never go into a bar without people buying him drinks, bla, bla, bla.  Eventually, we just give him one of the free drinks and leave before he tries to touch my boob or something.

I highly recommend stopping by GiGi's for an afternoon coolie if you're heading up to Ventura.  Maybe you'll be lucky enough to meet Ms. GiGi too!

Rating: xx

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All other reviews are right on. One of the few places that has live entertainment still. I always feel like at home and crowd always friendly! My favorite band is What The Funk!

Was with a group of folks doing the annual Ventura triathlon over in the harbor last weekend. Myself and a couple other lads were just along for support, so after everyone went to bed at 9pm we google mapped our way over to GiGis since there's really nothing else around the good ol' La Quinta Inn. It's sort of in a weird location within a neighborhood. There was a sweet little blues band with a ripping guitar player tucked into a 5x5 stage and 1 of 2 pool tables worked. Really sweet bartender with a heavy pour who looked like she'd worked there for 30 years. Got hustled for beers by some dude named Dusty who by the end of the night was a pro chess player, ex-special forces solder, semi-pro pool player, ex-con and fluent in Japanese.