"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun bars and club articles -- including guides, unique features, drink recipes and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
The votes are in and the winners have been selected for OnMilwaukee's Best: Bars & Clubs, 2009. The results of this readers' poll, including an editors' pick, are available in this series of articles that run all month long in the Bars and Clubs section of OnMilwaukee.com.
For the third year in a row, OnMilwaukee.com readers picked Nessun Dorma as Riverwest's best bar.
The pub stocks an impressive selection of beer, wine and whiskey. It offers 80 different kinds of beer and lager, as well as a few dozen types of wine by the glass or bottle, including red, white, sparkling, sake and more.
Nessun Dorma is a restaurant, too, and the Italian-nouveau cuisine is consistently delicious and affordable, from the formaggio sandwich to the gourmet nightly specials.
In 2008, Nessun Dorma restricted cigarette smoking to after 10 p.m.
The whiskey selection -- featuring Bourbon, Scotch and Irish whiskeys -- isn't as well known as Nessun Dorma's beer and wine list, but it's very extensive. On Monday nights, the bar / restaurant offers $1 off whiskey drinks.
But the signature drink at Nessun Dorma is -- and always will be -- Riverwest Stein.
"It’s a nod to the neighborhood," says co-owner Joe Gilsdorf. "The first barrel of Stein was poured here 20 years ago, when this place was Gordon Park Pub and the Lakefront Brewery was on Chambers. (The Klisch brothers) rolled it over here."
OnMilwaukee.com editors’ choice: Nessun Dorma
Runners-up:
2. Tracks
3. Stonefly Brewing Co.
4. The Foundation
5. Art Bar
6. The Uptowner
7. The Gig
8. River Horse
9. Linneman’s
10. Club Timbuktu
11. Circle A
12. The Commons
13. Bremen St. Cafe
14. Two
