Critics’ choice: Watering holes for gourmands

Mezcaleria Alma

Denver

Every spot that Johnny and Kasie Curiel have opened in Denver in the past few years has been “a window into Mexico’s dynamic food heritage,” said Kate Kassin in Bon Appétit. Late 2023 brought Alma Fonda Fina, winner of a Michelin star. Late 2024 brought this companion, a deeply stocked mezcal bar whose brief food menu is “nothing short of transportive.”

Visit with a friend, and the two of you “could work through Mezcaleria Alma’s one-page menu in a sitting.” The roughly dozen dishes include applewood-smoked tuna, pockets of tender masa filled with cheese, and bowls of leaf-green kanpachi ceviche shot through with dill. All of them are “electric.”

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And then there’s the bar, and a bottle list that “would make for an eternity of great drinking without ever repeating your order.” The mezcals, tequilas, sotols, and pechugas “can be sipped as is, or transformed into studied cocktails like a zingy, earthy corn sour.” You could get an education in Mexican spirits at this mescaleria. You’d also be more than happy to eat here every night. 2550 15th St.

The Wren

Baltimore

“The Wren is warm, intimate, and in many ways out of time,” said Lydia Woolever in Baltimore magazine. Inspired by the public living rooms of Dublin, the tin-ceilinged bar just two blocks from Baltimore’s harbor takes no reservations and blasts no Spotify playlists. Sitting on a stool with a whisky or a perfectly pulled pint of Guinness at your elbow, “you could very well be in a pub off the Irish Sea.”

In this convivial setting, Will Mester, a star local chef, is clearly in his element, using a couple of induction cooktops in the back corner to conjure “a simple yet sophisticated ode to European country cooking.” Mester’s chalkboard menu might feature tender pork cheeks in a turnip-laden broth or sage-fried egg and blood sausage in a smoky-sweet brown sauce.

When Mester is cooking, “even the basics are blissful,” and his Dublin-born wife, Millie Powell, makes delicious home-style desserts to match when she isn’t busy handling her maître d’ duties. Like its name-sake bird, which in a Celtic folktale outsmarts an eagle, “this old-soul watering hole proves that small can mean mighty.” 1712 Aliceanna St.

McGonagle’s Pub

Dorchester, Mass.

If there’s a battle raging over what Irish food is these days, chef Aidan McGee isn’t just in it: “He’s winning, decisively,” said Julia Moskin in The New York Times. At McGonagle’s, an upscale pub south of Boston, McGee serves an award-winning Sunday roast and uses a U.K.-built chip-cutting machine for his fish and chips.

But there’s also an adventurous, globally inspired side to his menu that’s common to pubs in today’s Ireland, such as croquettes of Irish cheese that are clear upgrades to American mozzarella sticks. Better yet, he has introduced to these shores “the spice bag”: a “magnificent late-night Dublin drunk food” that’s “a Chinese-Indian-Irish jumble” of fries and fried chicken bits tossed with chiles, cumin, star anise, and turmeric.

The Guinness is always handled with care here, served two degrees warmer than other beers, said Rachel Leah Blumenthal in Boston magazine. But McGonagle’s also has special house cocktails, a feature “expected at modern bars in Ireland but less so at Irish pubs in Boston.” Try the “Ah Go On Then”: gin and elderflower liqueur served cheekily in a teacup. 367 Neponset Ave.