The Twin Cities craft cocktail scene grew up in the early 2010s and never sat back down. Since the legendary Marvel Bar closed, a half-dozen serious cocktail rooms have stepped into the gap, each with their own register: speakeasy, distillery taproom, hotel bar, dim Eat Street den. These are the rooms where the bartender will actually have an opinion about your order.
A genuine speakeasy hidden behind an unmarked alley door in Lyn-Lake. Reservations through their cryptic email, classic cocktails done by people who care, and a room that takes itself just seriously enough to be fun. Worth the discovery process.
Read full entry →A small Northeast distillery making aquavit, gin, and rye in-house. The cocktail menu is built around what they make, the room is tiny and warm, and on a winter Thursday it is one of the best places to disappear with a Negroni in the metro.
Read full entry →The bar at Gavin Kaysen’s flagship North Loop restaurant. Walk-in only, ten seats, and one of the best places in the metro to drink at fine-dining bar prices without committing to the dining room. The seasonal cocktail menu is the order.
Read full entry →The bar inside the Dakota, the city’s serious jazz club. Order a drink, listen to whatever set is happening, and take advantage of one of the more sophisticated bar rooms downtown. Cover may apply for the music; the bar itself is open all night.
Read full entry →The small bar tucked inside the historic Butcher & the Boar building on 3rd Street North. Cocktails, snacks, a daily happy hour from four to six. The room takes the easy-going Tuesday-night register that the steakhouse upstairs can not. Open 4 PM nightly.
Read full entry →There is no menu. You tell the bartender what you are in the mood for and they build it on the spot, which sounds like a gimmick until the drink lands and it is exactly right. Caribbean-leaning bites, a first-come first-served room, no parties over six. The back has its own elevated dive called Neon Tiger if you want to switch registers without leaving the building.
Read full entry →The plush low-lit bar in the basement of Borough that helped set the modern Minneapolis cocktail standard. The Parlour Burger is the famous double, but the drinks are the reason to take the stairs down. Walk-in, open late on weekends, the kind of room where you settle in for three rounds.
Read full entry →A tiny, stylish jazz-leaning music bar in the old Askov Finlayson building. Live sets most nights in a room small enough that there is no bad seat, with a cocktail program that takes itself as seriously as the bookings. Go on a weeknight when you can actually hear the band and talk to the bartender.
Read full entry →Daniel del Prado built a plant-drenched speakeasy in the literal old Marvel Bar space beneath Porzana, and the ghost of that room is in good hands. You go around back to an unmarked service entrance, no reservations, first come first served. Dim, green, and one of the better date-night drinks in town.
Read full entry →The 510 Groveland building near Loring Park has been a serious drinking address since the La Belle Vie days, and P.S. Steak keeps the tradition. There are two bars: a brighter casual lounge and the formal Victorian bar in the steakhouse proper. Take the lounge for a martini and a wedge without committing to the full dinner.
Read full entry →The Travail crew built a cocktail bar around a digital galaxy of a menu, drinks grouped into clusters like the Agave Field and the Fermentation Firmament. It would be a stunt if the drinks were not this good and the housemade pasta this real. Intimate, ambitious, the most fun a QR-code menu has ever been.
Read full entry →The spiritual successor to Du Nord’s original room, now in the historic Coliseum Building on East Lake. New Orleans flair, cocktails built on the spirits they distill a few blocks away, and the rare distillery bar that feels like a real neighborhood hangout rather than a tasting-room afterthought.
Read full entry →A family-run distillery and lounge making award-winning brandies, herbal liqueurs, gin, and whiskey in St. Louis Park. The 3,000-square-foot room runs warm, fireplace and communal table, with cocktails built around the German-leaning spirits they make on site. Worth the drive west when you want a Negroni variation no one downtown is pouring.
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