For some of us, there may be a brief moment when, as we gaze up at Lemon’s menu board of beloved and forgotten classic cocktails, we feel the dreaded pang of intimidation. What on earth is an Absinthe Suissesse? Is this gonna be one of those bars?
Well firstly, Lemon’s Absinthe Suissesse is a (less absinthe-heavy) revival of the frothy, early 1900s brunch cocktail with absinthe, creme de menthe, egg white and orgeat. More importantly, I’m delighted to report that this West town cocktail bar and performance venue is anything but pretentious.
Here revived icons and cerebral creations like the Beet Salad (sotol, feta vodka, orgeat, amaro and beet shrub) share the same menu page as a killer Mojito and fancyish riff on the never-say-die Espresso Martini, aptly called Express-Yo-Self. (As the partners like to say, “Give the people what they want!”) Midwest Handshakes—a.k.a. a short Budweiser plus a shot of Malört or bourbon—will set you back just $5.25 all day, every day.
Not to mention that your drink might come with a side of percussionist Alex Santili’s ever-changing jazz ensemble on a Thursday night, or a couple of dad jokes any day of the week, courtesy of managing partner Zack McMahon and his fellow bartenders who are steadfastly amassing corny one-liners. “I’m currently reading a book about antigravity and I can’t put it down,” was a recent favorite.
“A lot of people have been saying this is a fancy cocktail bar, which I don’t love,” McMahon says. “At the same time, it’s not a dive. We’re in that middle place of breaking the illusion that just because we have nice cocktails we think about doing and work hard to make the best versions of, we’re still approachable. This is a neighborhood bar.”
A 2024 nomination for Best New Cocktail Bar–Central U.S. from Tales of the Cocktail reinforces that the global cocktail community already has its eye on this young bar’s drinks program. Yet Lemon’s something-for-everyone MO—as a third place and creative sanctuary for performance artists—speaks to its earnest origins as a convergence of overlapping dreams and professional lives realized by McMahon and his fellow managing partners, Jeremy Owen Barrett, Mason McIntire and Seth Blumenthal.
McMahon and Barrett met in college in St. Louis, and moved to Chicago within a few years of one another to pursue careers in performing arts. Both instead fell into bartending—Barrett at GreenRiver’s Annex bar and McMahon at Tied House at Schuba’s—where they gained experience building cocktail menus. Blumenthal, who clocked a long career in tech and healthcare, got to know Barrett as a regular at GreenRiver. He longed to become a hospitality industry investor and owner—and started picking up weekend shifts at South Loop coffee shop Spoke & Bird while still working full time. McIntire, meanwhile, represents the musical thread of this neighborhood bar tapestry and the bar’s namesake, dating back to a hated “lemon head” moniker he earned in high school. He bought a one-way ticket from Boston to Chicago in 2017 with the dream of starting a rock and roll band. Within a week and a half, he instead took a job at the Logan Square cocktail bar Billy Sunday, where he’d meet Barrett and McMahon, who joined soon after as bartenders.
Lemon unofficially began as a pandemic-era DIY summer concert series in McIntire’s then backyard, with McIntire booking the bands and Barrett and McMahon slinging a few impeccably balanced cocktails behind a makeshift bar built from wood planks and Home Depot buckets. The trio decided to put together a cocktail program as an identity springboard for their still-amorphous dream spot: part cocktail bar, part black-box theater, part live music venue.
Their dressed-down, if dead-serious, origins would help shape the bar’s eventual dedication to giving equal love to avante-garde and broadly likable drinks. But Lemon wouldn’t assume a real form until Blumenthal joined, bringing not just capital but legal and accounting know-how, a project plan, and realistic financial projections on things like plumbing and HVAC.
“Seth was always the missing piece in the sense of we were just young starry-eyed boys like, ‘let’s open a bar,’” Barrett says.
“As someone who spent years looking for business partners, it’s very difficult,” Blumenthal adds. “This partnership is special. That’s not to say there isn’t conflict or differences of opinion. We all worked to create this, but in a sense it’s also organic—given how we met and our lives became increasingly intertwined.”
They brought on another friend, Preston Lee, as an investor and director of service, who’s often onsite with his small yet commanding dog Baguette. Lemon opened in December 2023 in the former home of Grand Bar—which had been vacant for six years—after much sanding, painting, installing drywall and scraping gum off the bottom of the bar. “I counted, like, 370 pieces,” Barrett says.
Barrett and McMahon set out to create a menu that afforded them chances to get wacky without tipping into overly self-serious mixology territory—a word they profess to hate. “Pretentiousness comes with the success of bartenders,” Barrett says. “Something we’re very against is smoke and mirrors. You can start with a classic on the board, or start with a bartender’s choice; either way, we’re leading you into a discussion.”
Consider the “Bartender’s choice” Rule of Plum, an austere, beguiling stirred drink with floral Singani 63, plum, vegetal Oaxacan rum, zippy Makrut lime vermouth and grapefruit oil—which sports an almost olive-like quality behind its gentle bittersweetness. Or perhaps you’re after a more basic drink. How about “something spicy with mezcal”? This directive has become so common for bartenders that Lemon decided to just make a cocktail of that exact name. With serrano-infused mezcal, orange liqueur, lime, agave and a puckering Tajín rim, it tastes like a Marg with attitude. That said, the team is particularly proud of the spirit-frees, including the bracing, highball-style Garden Salad, with NA herbal spirit, grapefruit, beet shrub and Sicilian lemonade.
The spectrum of live performances gracing Lemon’s small stage in some ways reflects the range of the cocktails: From danceable electronic DJ sets and stomping, joyful drag queens and kings to chill, acoustic singer-songwriter sets and heady, groovy jazz from an ever-changing ensemble. On a quiet, dreary Monday night in early May, Lemon held a particularly raucous iteration of Dyke Night; the mojitos and NA cocktails flowed, the energy was magnetic. Dyke Night will occur weekly throughout the month of June, when Lemon will also host queer- and femme-focused standup and other shows in celebration of Pride month.
In fact, the bar’s performers were a major part of the decision to offer so many affordable drinks, like $4.20 Budweiser draft pours and $4.20 house shots of Fernet branca + Borghetti espresso liqueur + angostura. “The most important thing is I want to be a place where musicians hang out too,” McIntire says.
On that note, pricing here may seem curious: $14.70, $17.85, $16.80. But this is by design, too, in the service of creating a better place to work without resorting to service fees. The pricing structure bakes in the 5 percent cost of health care benefits (available even to part-time employees); it also helps pay for artists and bands, as well as higher than average salaries. (For instance, hosts make $20 per hour.) To that end, the crew has yet to lose a single employee from its opening team; Lemon’s staff is now 12-strong, including the partners.
“As owners we make somewhat less,” McMahon says. “But we’re trying our best to give employees a sustainable wage. We believe this is a real job. The industry chooses them, or they choose it, they should see it as something legitimate.”
It’s a tall order, setting out to be so many things to so many people all at once, but I get the sense this group of dreamers wouldn’t have it any other way. Give the people what they want, right?—including an endless supply of dad jokes.