The Landmark List: Our 2024 Bar Inductees
Our inaugural awards highlight places across the country worth building a trip around. Today we spotlight bars in Portland, Boston, and Charlottesville.
Welcome to the second installment of our inaugural Landmark List! In September, we shared our 2024 restaurant inductees: Uncle Wolfie’s Breakfast Tavern in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Snackbar in Oxford, Mississippi; Compère Lapin in New Orleans, Louisiana; and Goose the Market in Indianapolis, Indiana. Today, we award Landmark status to three of our favorite bars.
As we wrote then, we believe nothing is more exciting than the chance to explore new cities and towns each year. But there is something comforting about returning to a familiar place. We go back because of the restaurants, bars, and hotels we love there — and the chefs, bartenders, and hospitality all-stars that make those places special. We plan trips around these spots, and think you should, too. They are our Landmarks.
If you haven’t yet read the first installment of the Landmark List, we should review our Landmark criteria. First, we only recognize establishments that have been open for a minimum of five years — American Weekender Landmarks are beloved places with staying power. Second, we are only including spots we have visited again and again over the years so we can promise a consistent experience. And third, these spots are great. Their food and their drinks are at the top of the game and set the standard for not just their community, but for restaurants and bars around the country.
Here are our three bar inductees for 2024. Bookmark these spots and start planning your visit now — you’re in for a treat.
Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
Editors, American Weekender
Since it opened in 2014, The Alley Light has been one of Charlottesville’s best restaurants. But this cozy space, tucked away in an alley off the Downtown Mall, is also home to the city’s premier bar. We never miss an opportunity to pop in to share a seafood board loaded up with poached shrimp, cured fish, calamari, olives, vegetables, and pickles and order whatever bar manager Micah LeMon and his team have dreamed up for the cocktail menu.
Their drinks start from a classic template and spin out from there. “We identify a successful starting point and riff on that by subbing ingredients,” says LeMon, who has been with the Alley Light since it opened. “We make cocktails with Nutella, peanut butter, paw paws, ramps, black birch, and lots of weird things. It’s a matter of knowing how to put those ingredients together.” LeMon and his team certainly know how to put ingredients together — their house cocktails never miss.
The author of The Imbible: A Cocktail Guide for Beginning and Home Bartenders, LeMon is working on a book about foraging for cocktail ingredients in the area. The opening chef at the Alley Light hooked him on the idea, since, as LeMon says, “Food and drink come from nature and we’re trying to connect diners to nature and the flavors of a watershed. It hopefully makes them appreciate the area a bit more and makes them curious about the environment.” Some regional fall ingredients he uses in cocktails include hardy oranges, elderberries, and figs. “There are so many fig trees in town; I’ve got one and I picked 10 gallons of fruit to make jam.” He uses that jam in a whiskey sour with rye, vermouth, yellow Chartreuse, and egg white. He also frequently taps the Catawba grapes from his own yard and has turned them into cocktails like brandy sours as well as a housemade sherry (we got to try this one — “yard sherry” is super fun).
We are also particularly drawn to the bar’s solera cocktail program. LeMon ages cocktails in barrels, and then once those are taken out to drink, adds a new cocktail to the barrel. “I love doing that since you can take stirred cocktails that might be boozy or bitter or bracing and mellow them out by using the first cocktail to flavor the second one.” They just pulled out an El Presidente in anticipation of the election. The barrel-aging makes it “really oaky and yummy,” LeMon says. And that’s what this program is all about: “You want to elicit a reflective reaction from your diners and drinkers of happiness and yumminess.”
Year Opened: 2014
Must-Order: Barrel-Aged Cocktails, Seafood Board
108 2nd St SW, Charlottesville, VA 22902 | @thealleylight
Every time we find ourselves in Portland, Maine, we make multiple visits to Portland Hunt + Alpine Club. The cocktail bar is open six days a week starting in the afternoon, which means it’s easy to swing by for a couple hours midday for a hot dog, pimento cheese, or some deviled eggs along with an easy-drinking cocktail (our pick: the fizzy White Noise, made with Cocchi Americano Bianco, elderflower liqueur, and soda). We also frequently pop by for a pre-dinner espresso martini — their outstanding riff is made with rum and Allen’s Coffee Brandy, a Maine staple — or a nightcap such as an artichoke-spiked boulevardier. The bartenders there always hit the mark.
Portland Hunt + Alpine Club was the first serious cocktail bar to open in Portland, and owner Andrew Volk is looking ahead to the establishment’s next decade. “We’re focusing on the stuff we do well, and shedding the stuff that doesn’t fit the program we offer now,” he says. “We’re figuring out — what does an 11-year-old cocktail bar look like? How does it change? What does it feel like?” Part of that will be updating the space. “We’re going to make the place feel cozier,” Volk says. “A decade ago, minimal, clean, and gray felt of the moment and our identity. We’re going with a little darker, plusher, softer feel to the space.”
The menu format has evolved as well. It’s divided into categories, which are currently Martini, Daisy, Negroni, and Tourist’s Season. “The smaller menu sections give us the ability to be dynamic, changing things regularly,” Volk explains. “We worked on empowering our staff to have a voice and control within the menu, to give us more opportunities to highlight what we’re all excited about.” In August, we stopped in as the team was creating the Tourist’s Season section, filled with bright cocktails for the busiest time of year. A favorite in that section is the Mail Boat, an icy cobbler made with sherry, gin, curry, and guava.
“It’s a privilege to do this for 11 years,” Volk says. “Thinking and planning for the next 5 and 10 is a privilege, and I’m excited to embrace this elder statesman role in the community and with the cocktail world. It’s fun and new and different, a little bit weird but exciting. I want to be able to change and continue to adapt to what’s happening.”
Year Opened: 2013
Must-Order: White Noise, Espresso Martini
75 Market St, Portland, ME 04101 | @huntandalpine
Ran Duan’s parents were running two locations of Sichuan Garden in the Boston area when he joined the family business in 2009. In the suburb of Woburn, his parents let him take over part of the first floor of the restaurant. He turned that into the lauded Baldwin Bar. He later added The Baldwin and Sons Trading Co. upstairs, where the atmosphere is more refined and the cocktails are more complex. Visiting these two bars had been on our list for years — tropical cocktails and Sichuan food is a dream combination for us — and we finally made it in 2018. The experience was as great as we hoped and we still fondly remember a mezcal, Punt e Mes, strawberry, and lime cocktail on the menu at that time.
Woburn is 15 miles outside Boston, so it isn’t the easiest trip to make if you’re staying in the city without a car. So we were thrilled in 2018 when Duan took over his parents’ other location of Sichuan Garden and turned it into Blossom Bar. It’s located on Washington Street in the heart of Brookline, closer to downtown Boston so you can easily get a ride over for a drink or two. Since our first visit back then, we’ve found the cocktails just as fun and the food just as delicious. It’s since become one of our favorite Boston bars.
Blossom Bar’s cocktails highlight South American fruits. The Bocadillo Sour, made with guava paste-infused white rum, mascarpone, lime, and mint is a bright, creamy favorite inspired by a Colombian snack, while the Queen’s Court is a smoky stirred aged rum cocktail with Cynar, mango, and peat. Duan’s Whip is a play on Dole Whip with rum, Cynar, tangerine, and St. Germain. You should eat here, too – the cocktails’ tropical flavor profiles match well with dishes like spicy dan dan noodles and double-cooked bacon and speak to the smart evolution Duan has given this space.
Year Opened: 2018
Must-Order: Queen’s Court, Bocadillo Sour
295 Washington St, Brookline, MA 02445 | @blossom_bar_brookline
We published the first half of our 2024 Landmark List inductees in September, when we honored Compére Lapin in Louisiana, Snackbar in Mississippi, Goose the Market in Indiana, and Uncle Wolfie’s Breakfast Tavern in Wisconsin. If you’re thinking about visiting an American Weekender Landmark, you can can find more nearby places for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks in these past issues:
Have a favorite place you think should be an American Weekender Landmark? Leave a comment below or chat with us on Substack, download our Field Guides, check out our archives, or follow us on Instagram @americanweekender. We’ll be back next week.
I live in Brookline and I didn't know about this bar! Thank you for the recommendation! I have also taken note of the one in Portland 🥳