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| Johnny Michaels, the man behind one of the best bars in the country. |
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If you're looking for a new way to get over the midweek hump, Hell's Kitchen has recently created a new option. Hopping on the same bandwagon as other major Twin Cities restaurants, Hell's Kitchen is invading the craft cocktail scene: From 9 p.m. until close every Wednesday night, you can head down to the restaurant's back bar and experience Craft Cocktail Wednesday.
Hell's Kitchen's creates cocktails personally designed for each patron
Today marks the first time that the Edina Grill, and other Edina restaurants, will be able to host a happy hour. In honor of this momentous event, the Grill is throwing a party. With the city of Edina finally overturning its longstanding law that prohibited happy hours, restaurants can now offer area residents a place to go for discounted food and drinks specials.
Edina Grill Celebrates It's First Ever Happy Hour
What do you get when you cross a Mexican holiday, a historic horse race, and the best drink mixers in the business? A room full of giant hats, refreshing cocktails, and one inexplicable guy in a kilt. The Northstar Bartenders Guild held its latest bash in a posh loft with 180-degree views of downtown Minneapolis, from the Riverside Plaza apartment complex to the Metrodome to the glittery lights of downtown. The party began in the late afternoon and stretched into the evening.
Northstar Bartenders Guild set up classic margaritas
The Northstar Bartenders Guild creates dazzling cocktail experiences. From the kickoff for Johnny Michaels's cocktail book to the after-New Year's party, these events are packed with fantastic beverages, elegant bites of food, and a cache of extraordinary personalities.
These guys really know how to throw a party
If your experience with Modern Cafe begins and ends with hearty pot roast and beer, now you can get a flash from the past on Vintage Pour Thursdays, sampling a cache of liquors dating as far back as the late 1800s.
Modern Cafe pours 100-year-old booze, without irony
After blowing the roof of its not actually New Year's Eve party, the Northstar Bartenders Guild is now promoting its second event, cleverly titled the Imbibes of March.
Chad Larson Shawn Jones pouring drinks at the last NSBG event
The margarita is a classic, no doubt about it. The earliest published recipe we can find is in Esquire magazine in 1953. The recipe called for tequila, orange liqueur, and fresh lime. 
The margarita: fighting off scurvy for over 50 years
As everything else does, this drink evolved in various ways, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. In Mexico you will be hard pressed to find a margarita that doesn't have a splash of orange juice naturally sweetening the drink and rounding out the flavor profile. In America many presweetened products inferior to fresh juice and far more expensive have for some reason become common. These premade "margarita mixes" might make it easier for a person to throw a fiesta at home, but they have no place in a professional bar.
In many bars bartenders have experimented with tequila infusions, alternative natural sweeteners, and various liqueurs.
In our Twin Cities there is no shortage of delicious margaritas, both traditional and experimental. Here are the 10 best.
The bummer about working in the hospitality industry is that while all your buddies are out having fun, you're left working the party. That's why a week after the actual holiday, the Northstar Bartenders Guild threw its own New Year's event. 
Chad Larson Mortalized in ice: The NSBG
What exactly happens when the Cities' cocktail masters all gather in one place? Well, chances are someone is going to lose their pants.
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Life keeps getting better for Twin Cities cocktail lovers. New and exciting craft cocktails are being conceived, and classic cocktails are being rediscovered. No list of classic cocktails would be complete without the martini.
It's clean, elegant, sexy, and its simplicity is part of it genius. The original martini was equal parts gin (or vodka) and sweet vermouth with a dash of orange bitters. The recipe has evolved to be made with dry vermouth, and far less of it (I use a ratio of 3:1). Some omit the orange bitters, and some (heathens) even skip the vermouth altogether
.
But the martini is more than just the sum of its parts; it's also an
experience. You just can't order a martini anywhere; the room itself is
part of the experience. It can't be a cookie cutter chain restaurant. It
has to have character and sophistication to match the cocktail.
To name the top 10 martinis in the Twin Cities wasn't easy. There are so
many great bartenders making great martinis. These are the bars that
are pouring the martini that my great-grandfather would have wanted.
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