Trick Dog has spent more than a decade doing something almost no other bar bothers with: every few months it throws away its entire cocktail list and rebuilds it around a completely new object. There have been menus shaped like Chinese takeaway leaflets, paint colour charts, horoscopes and pirate maps. The current edition is a photography book about San Francisco, with sixteen drinks built to correspond to the images inside it. This is not a gimmick bolted onto a normal bar. It is the organising principle of the whole operation.
The menu changes completely every few months, so whatever you read about this bar last year is probably describing drinks that no longer exist. Ask Karpo what the current edition is before you go looking for a specific cocktail.
The menu as a designed object
Each edition is conceived and produced as a physical thing first, and the drinks are built to fit it. That is the reverse of how bar menus normally work, and it produces a list with an internal logic — the cocktails relate to each other and to the theme rather than being a spread of styles arranged by base spirit.
The current edition is built around photographs of the city and the people in it, with each drink corresponding to an image. That gives the list an unusually strong sense of place, which is a nice change from the generic internationalism of most high-end cocktail menus.
It also means the menus become collectable, and people do collect them. If you find one you like, take it — that is understood behaviour here and always has been. The bar has been printing them as keepsakes from the beginning.
Ordering from a themed list
A themed list is harder to order from than a conventional one, because the names tell you nothing and the descriptions are often oblique. The efficient approach is to ignore the concept entirely and read the ingredients, or to tell the bartender what you normally drink and let them route you.
Everything is priced at a single flat number across the list, which removes the usual quiet pressure to work out which drink represents value. It also means you can order the strange one without feeling you have gambled money on it.
There is no house classic to fall back on, by design — the whole list will be gone in a few months. That is liberating if you enjoy being led and mildly frustrating if you came for a specific drink somebody described to you. Come for the bar, not for a cocktail.
The food has grown up
For most of its life the kitchen here was a solid bar-food operation, and recently it has moved noticeably in a more ambitious direction, with a genuinely composed seasonal menu rather than a list of things to soak up alcohol.
That changes the calculation for an early visit. Arriving at opening, eating properly and drinking two things is now a complete evening rather than a prelude to dinner elsewhere, which is not something you could reasonably have said a few years ago.
It also means the food prices have moved accordingly. This is no longer the cheap half of the bill, and a table that orders across the menu should expect a restaurant number rather than a snacks number.
When the room turns
It opens in the late afternoon and the first couple of hours are calm, seated and easy. This is when you can get a bar stool, ask questions, and have the bartender walk you through an unfamiliar list without a queue building behind you.
By mid-evening it is full, and on Friday and Saturday it stays that way until very late. The room is large and high-ceilinged, which helps, but it is a loud, standing, shoulder-to-shoulder bar at peak and it does not pretend otherwise.
There is no reservation system for the bar, so the only lever you have is arrival time. Getting there within the first hour of opening is the single most effective thing you can do to enjoy this particular bar, and almost nobody does it.
The Mission around it
It sits on a residential stretch of 20th Street, a short walk from the busier corridors of Valencia and Mission. That slight remove is deliberate and it keeps the immediate block quiet even when the bar is heaving.
The surrounding neighbourhood has one of the highest concentrations of good food and drink in San Francisco, which makes waiting for space here painless. Almost anything you walk to within ten minutes will be worth the detour.
Getting home is straightforward by rideshare and slightly less so on foot late at night, as with much of the city. The 16th and 24th Street stations are both a real walk rather than a step outside, which is worth factoring in before the last drink rather than after.
Practical notes
The entire cocktail list is replaced every few months. Anything you read about a specific drink here is probably out of date.
Cocktails are priced at a single flat rate across the list, so ordering the unfamiliar one costs you nothing extra.
Ignore the theme when ordering — read the ingredients, or describe what you like and let the bartender choose.
Take the menu home if you want it. They are printed as keepsakes and always have been.
No reservations. Arriving within the first hour of opening is the only reliable way to get a seat.
The kitchen has become genuinely ambitious; eating here properly is now a real option rather than a stopgap.
Tags: #happyhour #trickdog #missiondistrict #sanfrancisco #sfbars #craftcocktails #sfnightlife #cocktailmenu #bayarea #sfeats #20thstreet #cocktailbar #designobject
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Ask Karpo first
The list you find online is almost certainly the previous edition. Ask Karpo what the current menu is built around, how busy the room is at the hour you are free, and where to go nearby if there is nowhere to stand.
