The Best Bars in Ann Arbor

We published our best cocktail bars guide earlier this year, and it covers the places where the drink-making is serious and the bartenders have opinions about ice. That guide does what it should. But Ann Arbor's bar scene is wider than craft cocktails, and a guide that only covers the places where a drink takes four minutes to build misses half the picture.

This is the other half. And some of the first half, too. The full map of where to drink in Ann Arbor: cocktail bars, beer bars, wine bars, the tiki bar in the basement, and the bar where you go because the stool feels right and nobody is trying to impress you. Different bars serve different purposes on different nights, and the city has enough range to match most of them.

The Cocktail Bars

The Last Word (301 W Huron St)

If you are going to drink one cocktail in Ann Arbor, start with the namesake. The Last Word takes its name from the gin-and-Chartreuse classic that cocktail historians trace to the Detroit Athletic Club during Prohibition.^{1The Last Word cocktail's history, including its reported origin at the Detroit Athletic Club, has been documented by cocktail historians and widely reported in cocktail publications.} The menu is organized around eras of American cocktail making, the bartenders can walk you through every section, and the room, small and dim with dark wood and no televisions, is built for drinking and talking.

Cocktails run $13 to $17. The bartender's choice is the move when you cannot decide. Tell them a spirit and a direction. They will handle the rest. On a Tuesday at 5 p.m., the room breathes. On a Friday at 10, it fills.

312 Underground (312 S Main St)

You descend a staircase from street level into a basement bar with maybe twenty seats and bartenders making drinks directly in front of you. The ceiling is low. The room is close. 312 Underground is a cocktail bar where the intimacy of the space shapes the drinking. Seasonal menus rotate, and house originals lean creative: mezcal with burnt honey and mole bitters, a clarified milk punch. Cocktails run $13 to $16.^{2312 Underground pricing observed across visits in 2025, consistent with our cocktail bars guide.}

No reservations. Arrive early or accept the wait. A cocktail at 312 tastes better in this room than it would anywhere else, and the room is the reason.

Pretzel Bell (226 S Main St)

The name dates to 1934, the year local historical accounts commonly cite for the original Pretzel Bell's opening on this same block.^{3Multiple Ann Arbor historical accounts reference the original Pretzel Bell as opening in the 1930s, with 1934 as the commonly cited year.} The current incarnation is a cocktail-forward bar with the atmosphere of a comfortable pub. High ceilings, warm light, a long bar with substance. The old-fashioned is the benchmark: bourbon, sugar, and bitters in a familiar format. Check the current menu for pricing.

The Varsity Burger with fried egg, bacon, and smoked Gouda is the food worth ordering. Come at 4:30 on a Wednesday and the place is yours. See our cocktail bars guide and happy hour guide for more on Pretzel Bell's programs.

The Beer Bars

Bar Lupulus (311 S Main St)

The best beer bar in Ann Arbor operates under its own name at street level inside Jolly Pumpkin's taproom. The tap list is the deepest Jolly Pumpkin lineup in the state: La Roja, Bam Biere, Calabaza Blanca, and limited releases that appear without announcement. Most of what is pouring at any given time is Jolly Pumpkin.

The sour beer cocktails are the differentiator. Jolly Pumpkin's current tap list and cocktail menu are the right source for which sour ales and beer cocktails are available. Draft and cocktail prices change with the program.^{4Bar Lupulus pricing from our profile, observed in late 2025.}

Jolly Pumpkin (311 S Main St)

Same building as Bar Lupulus, different proposition. Jolly Pumpkin's dining room side serves wood-fired pizza alongside Ron Jeffries' sour ales. Bam Biere is the session beer: light enough for two pints before dinner, interesting enough that you will not wish you had ordered something else. The rooftop opens seasonally, and a La Roja three stories above South Main on a Thursday at 5 p.m. is one of the city's better small pleasures. Most food items fall between $12 and $22.^{5Jolly Pumpkin menu pricing from our profile, observed in early 2026.}

Upstairs, Bori Korean Kitchen & Bar adds a third floor to what has become Ann Arbor's most interesting single address.

The Tiki Bar

Hunã Tiki Bar (200 S Main St, basement)

A rum-forward tiki bar in the basement of Echelon, Ann Arbor's James Beard semifinalist, run by the same team. The entrance is a discreet door on Washington Street, west of Main, and the staircase drops into roughly 4,000 square feet of thatched-roof bar, bamboo trim, booths, banquettes, and high-tops. Around seventy-eight seats. The Strong Island stacks gin, rum, vodka, lemon, cinnamon, curacao, grapefruit soda, and bitters; the Iguana is a riff on a green Negroni with Midori and Chartreuse; the Zombie arrives in a skull mug with a two-per-person limit the bar enforces. Cocktails run $14 to $19.^{6Hunã Tiki Bar room, drink, and price details from our profile and The Pour entry.}

Large-format shareable drinks in ceramic vessels are the group option and cost less per serving than four individual orders. The bar snack menu is short: coconut shrimp, poke, bao buns or lettuce wraps, galbi ribs, dessert. Thursday through Saturday, 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., no membership required during those hours. The play is dinner upstairs at Echelon, then drinks below. Our opening brief, full profile, and The Pour entry go deeper on the program.

The Wine Bar

Spencer (113 E Liberty St)

Spencer is a wine shop by day and a tasting-menu restaurant by night, but the bar program bridges both identities. Before the evening's tasting begins, and on nights when the restaurant is dark, the natural wine list is the draw. The selection leans toward small producers, biodynamic bottles, and the kind of wines that reward a conversation with the person behind the counter. Glass pours change regularly.

USA Today named Spencer to its 2026 Restaurants of the Year list, and the wine program is a significant part of what earned that recognition.^{7USA Today's 2026 Restaurants of the Year list, published February 2026.} If you want to drink wine in Ann Arbor with someone who knows the list and can guide you without lecturing, this is where you go.

The Bar That Also Serves Dinner

Black Pearl (302 S Main St)

Black Pearl is a seafood restaurant and sushi bar on South Main, but the cocktail list and sake selection are strong enough to justify a bar-only visit. The sake list rewards exploration, and the staff knows it well enough to guide a curious drinker through several pours without condescension. Pair a sake flight with a few pieces of nigiri and you have a happy hour that costs less than you expect and delivers more.

Happy hour runs Monday through Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m. and Friday through Saturday from 4 to 5 p.m. The heated greenhouse extends the season for outdoor drinking. Seventeen years on South Main, and the bar is still earning its own crowd separate from the dining room.

Aventura (216 E Washington St)

A tapas restaurant first, but the sherry list is among the best in town, and the late afternoon is when the bar shows best. Manzanilla sherry, cold and briny, alongside double-fried bravas with salsa brava is one of the better pairings in the city for under $20. The building dates to 1872, and the pace is Mediterranean in the best sense.^{8Aventura building date per our profile and local historical records.}

Aventura does not do "happy hour" in the formal sense. What it does is make late-afternoon drinking feel like something you planned.

The South Main Argument

Eight of the eleven places on this list are on or within a block of South Main Street. Echelon at 200, with Hunã in the basement below it. Pretzel Bell at 226. Black Pearl at 302. Jolly Pumpkin, Bar Lupulus, and Bori at 311. 312 Underground at 312. The Chop House at 322. The density is unusual for a city this size, and it means drinking in Ann Arbor increasingly means drinking on South Main.

The exceptions prove the rule. The Last Word on Huron, Spencer on Liberty, and Aventura on Washington all operate in quieter registers, off the main corridor, offering something the strip does not: space to think.

If you want a plan for a Friday night, start at The Last Word on Huron, walk south to Pretzel Bell for a second drink and the burger, then end at 312 Underground or go down the stairs to Hunã depending on your mood. Four bars, three blocks, four different experiences. The whole evening costs less than a concert ticket and lasts longer.

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Hours, specials, and pricing vary by establishment and season. Call ahead or check websites for current offerings. Prices listed are as of early 2026. For cocktail-specific recommendations, see our cocktail bars guide. For happy hour picks, see our happy hour guide.