Everybody hates a QR code menu. So when you enter Stargazer, the fancy new northeast Minneapolis cocktail bar from Travail and Robb Jones of Meteor, you might wonder why you’re being presented with one—can some of the best we’ve got in local food and drink really not do better?
Just scan it. There are very fun things in store.
Jones and the Travail crew worked with local food photographer/app builder Scott Meinzer to develop a bar menu unlike any other in town. That QR code takes your phone’s browser to a digital galaxy, with groupings of stars like the Botanical Cluster, the Agave Field, and the Fermentation Firmament. Tap on a collection of stars—the Fruit Nebula, for example—and you’ll see a grouping of cocktails like the Seasonal Sidecar and Metropole.
Move over, 94-year-old space pioneer Buzz Aldrin, who we're just now learning is still alive: This is the era of Buzzed Aldrin.
It’s the kind of thing that reminds you there’s still room for innovation in restaurants, and that while it may feel like there’s nothing new under the sun, the right group of creative people can still genuinely surprise. (Just wait until you see the Stargazer bathroom.) And it’s in line with the sort of broader ethos here: “We didn’t want to do something that was just a cocktail bar again,” Jones tells Racket.
Yes, “just” a cocktail bar, the Meteor owner says of the highly acclaimed, James Beard-nominated, ultra-cool north Minneapolis bar he opened in 2019. That should give you a sense of how high the, ahem, bar is at Stargazer, where everything is—and they’ve earned this overused buzzword—extremely intentional. It’s an experience, from the moment you step in the door and take in the space, with lights approximating stars in the ceiling and a bluish-purple glow emanating from everywhere and nowhere at all.
Jones says much of Stargazer’s character came from asking, “What could be the future of things like this?” If Meteor is about getting good drinks into peoples’ hands as quickly as possible, Stargazer is more deliberate in terms of service and hospitality. There’s a true constellation of cocktails, with a menu of roughly 50 drinks ranging from classics like a caipirinha to original creations like the Murder of Crows (like a jungle bird, but “darker and angrier”). There are no batched cocktails here; bartenders are building every last one from scratch.
“When I started bartending, it was because I thought it was so cool that all these old recipes had existed for so long,” Jones says. “In my mind, that’s what people should be doing to charge what they’re charging for cocktails at other places.”
At a soft opening last Thursday, seated around the massive U-shaped marble bar that anchors Stargazer (and marveling at what that hunk of stone must have cost), a friend and I first sipped on the Bywater ($16, in the menu’s Super Massive Black Hole section) and Boogie Nights ($16, Fruit Nebula). The former, a rum and Chartreuse riff originally created in New Orleans, is full-bodied and strong, with a syrupy cherry hiding at the bottom; the latter is foamy and soft, with a citrusy sweetness. “Best enjoyed on roller skates by the pool,” the menu says, and it really might make you feel a little like Heather Graham’s Roller Girl.
There are no forks and no reservations at Stargazer, so the Travail-designed food menu is made up of skewers, dips, and small bites. We loved the beef tartare ($12), made with strip loin from the wagyu experts at Snake River Farms and delivered upon a texturally perfect taro chip, along with the truffle corn dog ($12), which pops Kramarczuk’s dogs on a stick and dunks it in a gouda cheese sauce. There’s also the playful potato rosti ($9), with fancy, wonderfully crispy-squishy hash brown fries arranged into a structure like little Lincoln Logs, with house-made Top the Tater and Cry Baby Craig’s ketchup for dipping.
Stargazer’s galactic menu isn’t just fun for guests; it lets the team switch things up whenever they want. “Part of the drag [of running a bar] is, like, losing that momentum sometimes, when you need to do a complete menu change,” Jones says. Introducing a new menu means you have to call in and re-train the whole staff, reprint menus, and move product. It all slows innovation and deters change.
At Stargazer, the team can add or remove cocktails more or less on a whim, letting the staff be more playful, more adventurous, and more experimental. Jones says generally he wouldn’t even consider putting a cocktail like the $27 Baller Vieux Carré, made with vintage XO Armagnacs and fancy aged rye whiskey, on the menu—if you print it, you’re committed to it.
“Whereas with this website, it disappears!” he laughs. The vastness of the menu means guests can order plenty of less-expensive options, or, because they’re not batching, enjoy a pricey drink for less made with a cheaper whiskey. Things can change and evolve, expanding and shifting like outer space itself.
“Remember when Pluto was a planet?” Jones chuckles.
Stargazer
Address: 1304 NE. Second St., Minneapolis
Hours: 4 to 11 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 4 p.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday
