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ALEXANDER POPE HOUSE: Some would question the wisdom of theming a bar after people ruined by drink. In a quaint side-street house in Nob Hill, new bar The Peddler and Pen (2327 NW Kearney St., 477-4380, thepeddlerandpen.com) has papered the walls with subdued Victorian patterns and hung pictures of famously lushy Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde (who died awash in opium, chloral and Champagne) not to mention an anonymous drunken writer sprawled over a fireplace stuffed tight with books. But maybe the theme makes sense here. One drinking establishment after another has been abandoned here over the past four years, from Laurelwood to Northwest Public House to Huckleberry Pub.
Name a drink for Kafka after that, and you're within your rights. But like Wilde on his deathbed, any true alcoholic writer would be drunk beyond his means, with an ambitious draft list that includes beautifully alcoholic Brother Thelonious Belgian strong dark ($9) and Fleur de Blanc from the Commons ($6), plus rotating house-bottled cocktails ($10). Even the crap beer—Dortmunder DAB in a can—comes from Germany, not Milwaukee, and the hot dogs that take up half the food menu cost around $8. Well drinks drop to $4 during early and late happy hours, with a buck tacked on to get one of the city's better cheap Old Fashioneds. The mood is less degenerate than tamely domestic, but the bar's best feature went nigh unused on a recent Friday. An idyllic patio sat empty, next to a quote from Wilde narrating the problem: Only some of us were looking at the stars.
WWeek 2015