If ya'll are considering the Chinatown region, I'd love to come AND make some recommendations.
I work a couple of blocks from Chinatown and know a bunch of great restaurants. "Buddha's Delight" is an excellent vegetarian/vegan restaurant, with affordable prices, great food, and fun fake meat type dishes. I'm not a vegetarian (currently) and I love the food there. I bring a lot of my meat-eating friends there, and they never complain (unless they are the complaining type anyway). I don't know if Buddha's Delight serves firewater. It always has lots of room, too. Another great restaurant is Penang, excellent, excellent food, a little more pricey than Buddha's Delight. I think it's Vietnamese. This place does serve firewater, but is packed and noisy a lot of the time. The "buddist yam pot" is absolutely killer! Chinatown has the advantage of being a couple of blocks from the red,green,orange and blue lines, and having great, affordable food and drink. Enough boosterism. Let me know if you're interested. -DJCP
