Best Budget Bites: $1.75 Bar Tacos From Sweeney’s Saloon

The cost of things these days? Far too expensive! Tariffs, the Strait of Hormuz, rent prices, giddy price-gouging from proprietors large and small—the boring factors are too numerous to count. To protect our readers, Racket launched the Best Budget Bites series, where we’ll showcase a toothsome, wallet-friendly food item that’ll actually fill you up. Have a nomination? Hit us up: tips@racketmn.com.

What: Bar tacos
Where: Sweeney's Saloon, 96 Dale St. N., St. Paul
Cost: $1.75
Availability: 3-6 p.m. daily

There are few finer pastimes than reminiscing about lost happy hours, to wistfully recall the $2 beers of youth, ponder the $5 burgers we once knew. 

If I press him, my recalcitrant barber will tell me about 25-cent beer night that once ran on a long lost Randolph Avenue bar. My personal favorite: When Minneapolis’s Aster Cafe first opened up, it ran $5 happy-hour food specials alongside $3 pints across all taps, no matter the ABV percentage. For a few weeks, before the bar manager caught on, that deal included the seasonal gem Bell’s Hopslam. 

All that is the realm of foggy memory, but the same can not be said of bar tacos at Sweeney's Saloon in St. Paul. If ever there were a Happy-Hour Hall of Fame, these would be first-ballot inductees. In these trying times when civic institutions are under attack, eroded by a vast and growing array of entropic forces, rest assured that Sweeney’s happy-hour tacos are alive and well. Despite relentless inflationary pressures and the death of the penny, they still cost a mere $1.75.

As recently as 2014, these tacos would set you back just 50 cents. Today they are $1.75—still cheap!—and par for the course when it comes to food inflation. (The local University Avenue banh mi’s have escalated at an equivalent pace.) Available every day from 3–6 p.m., pair two tacos with a pint of Summit, and you come in at $8.

The tacos themselves are a matter of taste, but if you’re a Midwestern gringo of a certain age, they are nostalgia bombs. This is Old El Paso-maxxing, elevating a simple structure to an art, like all great bar food. 

First, the tacos come out almost instantly. I imagine the Sweeney’s kitchen has the assembly process winnowed to precise short-order gestures. You receive a plastic parchment-paper basket coddling a textured, crunchy shell, inside of which is a layered delicacy. At the top, shredded cheddar blankets a handful of chopped tomatoes. Under that sits a thick sedimentary layer of lettuce, beneath which lurks the magma of ground beef, just spicy enough to catch your attention, just moist enough for meat juice to trickle through the inevitable cracks in the hard shell. Naturally, a plastic fork is provided to scoop up the delicious detritus.  

The whole thing holds up. This is objectively not Mexican food—perish the thought! Yet taken as white-guy junk food, the contrasting textures alone transfix me. Just thinking of this taco makes me salivate. And you can get it, any day of the week, from 3–6 p.m., for less than $2 in the year of our lord 2026, all the while ensconced in the laid-back environs of Sweeney’s, underneath a Jesse Ventura action figure, surrounded by repurposed pews, or pressed up against the wood walls of the cozy patio.

Don’t take these happy hours for granted, folks. Nothing lasts forever.

BBB Hall of Fame

• $6 Ham ‘n’ Cheese Croissant From Heather’s
• $5 Bánh Mì From iPho by Saigon
• $5.50 Chicken Sandwich From Logan’s
• $1.25 Colossal Cinnamon Roll Doughnuts From Cub
• $9 Chicken Shish Taouk Sandwich From Ed's Deli
• $1.99 Corn Dog From Kowalski's
• $8.75 Egg Sandwich From Sun Street Breads
• $3.50 Tamales From La Loma
• $6.50 Breakfast Burrito From Lito’s Burritos
• $5.49 Roast Beef Sandwich From Wally's
• $7.50 ‘Mini’ Tacos Dorados From Mi Mexico Querido
• $9.99 Pasty From Milda’s Cafe
• $4.50 Slice and a Pop From Fast Eddie's Pizza
• $9 Cheesy B From Band Box Diner
• $6.99 Roast Beef Sandwich From Kevan's Penn Lake Roast Beef
• $5.80 Cheeseburger from Lions Tap
• $6 'Big Slice' From Lucca Pizzeria
• $8.75 Olive Burger From Sandy's Tavern
• $8.11 'Specialty Sandwiches' From Nelson Cheese & Deli
• $9.49 Chicken Sandwich From Zakia Deli
• $1 Veggie Samosas From Pooja Grocers
• $4 Shower Oranges From Aldi
• $8.79 Bacon 3 Cheesesteak From Charleys Cheesesteaks
• $9.95 Pad Thai From Jasmine Thai
• $9.99 Roast Beef Sandwich From Maverick's Real Roast Beef
• $3.75 Happy Hour Tacos From Pizza Luce Duluth
• $8.99 Gyro From Ali Baba's King of Gyros
• $6.99 Torta de Tamal From Hermanos Locos Tacos
• $8.99 Burrito From Maya Cuisine
• $7.95 Classic Breakfast Croissant From Mi-Sant
• $1.75 Bar Tacos From Sweeney’s Saloon