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With a constellation of lively bars, the city’s most oyster-centric late-night joint, and a madcap circus, North Beach may be the one San Francisco neighborhood that emerged from the pandemic even stronger. The trend shows no signs of stopping, as a shuttered neighborhood bar has been reborn as a quietly excellent lounge.

It’s called The Lucky Spot (opens in new tab), and its eight craft cocktails — all in the $13 to $16 range — fit North Beach’s nightlife-centric atmosphere hand in glove. To create them, owner Barry John Walsh, who also owns retro-themed Marina bar For the Record (opens in new tab), enlisted the help of longtime collaborator Kelsey DeCarlo. Among the standouts is the peppery, bracing Herb & Heat, the components of which read like an eccentric cold remedy: tequila, lemon, honey, pepper listed as “heat,” and … celery. Then there’s the Wilde Thing, a practically mandatory whiskey-with-Fernet creation that’s garnished with a lime wheel as big as the glass and drinks like an adult cherry cola. 

A spin on an espresso martini is equally obligatory, while the Lucky American ditches vodka in favor of sweet vermouth and Cappelletti Aperitivo, the Italian liqueur that’s less sweet than the better-known Aperol. At the opposite end of the martini spectrum, the Dirty Deeds takes Grey Goose vodka or Bombay Sapphire gin and adds a house-made pickle brine instead of olive juice.

Things only grow more creative from there. If you’ve ever wondered why root beer, that assertive and complex flavor, feels banished to the periphery of mixology, check out the Root Awakening, which rescues the flavor of sassafras from the realm of sugary sodas and combines it with mezcal, chartreuse, and vanilla. Running with one of the bigger cocktail trends of 2025, it’s got a dense layer of cream on top — but in this case, it doubles as a visual gag, riffing on the classic root beer float. Thick foam reappears atop the vodka-based Orange You Glad, a combination of peach, orange, vanilla, and coconut that isn’t so much a tropical drink as a love letter to the Creamsicle.

Walsh, a native of Ireland who’s lived in the city for 12 years, often crows about San Francisco to relatives who have been under the impression that the place has fallen apart completely. If anything, downtown’s recovery is accelerating, so it made sense to capitalize on the turnaround from one neighborhood over. “If I’m ever going on a night out with my wife, we’re always in North Beach,” Walsh said.

The bar takes over the former Vieni Vieni Lucky Spot, from which Walsh has removed the pool table, repainted the interior, and mounted some framed bits of local trivia to the wall, including a 1960s-era black-and-white photo of erotic dancer Carol Doda holding an umbrella and clinging to a street pole. Apart from removing the vinyl floor to reveal the hardwood entombed beneath it, Walsh left much of the predecessor’s bones intact. Outside, The Lucky Spot’s sign, fashioned by artist and neighborhood resident Jeremy Fish (opens in new tab), depicts the Transamerica Pyramid as an upside-down martini glass, with Coit Tower as a beer stein.

Gen Z calls this “aura-farming (opens in new tab).” But in North Beach, with its entrenched Italian American culture, it’s better understood as “sprezzatura,” or the art of looking effortlessly hip. That’s why Walsh refers to Lucky Spot as an “elevated dive,” where the drinks are refined but the attitude remains as low-key as any punk spot on nearby Green Street, where the restroom walls are covered in stickers. 

Vieni Vieni had been around for 80 years or so — the previous owners weren’t sure of the exact date — and Walsh wanted its regulars to feel instantly comfortable in its replacement. It should help that his love for San Francisco is infectious. “People think I live in an apocalypse scene, and I am trying to defend it to them, like ‘Have you come?’” he says. “Now they can.”