Hidden, phone-free bar debuts new drinks menu. Here’s what to order

To understand Trophy Room, you literally have to be there. The phone-free bar is a ghost in our “pics, or it didn’t happen” era.

But to mark the debut of its first new cocktail menu since opening in 2023, Trophy Room broke its own rules and invited us into the bar, phones in hand. 

The 90-minute bar experience is hidden inside Wren & Wolf, the downtown restaurant whose interiors evoke the wild, with taxidermied animals and expansive paintings set around the curved booths and tables. The intimate, sultry-lit lounge, meanwhile, has the feeling of stepping into a hunter’s study for a nightcap. The masculine space features cushy leather seats, a towering taxidermied grizzly bear and vintage English World War I-era rifles fanned out above the bar and fireplace mantle.

“There is a rather distinct vibe to the space, which lends itself to a nice escape from perhaps the wilderness outside,” says Zachary O’Haire, the beverage director for Trophy Room’s parent hospitality company Pretty Decent Concepts. 

When O’Haire set out to rethink the menu, he started imagining this hunter’s lodge as a waypoint along a journey. From there, he began framing an imagined expedition across America, drawing from different regions, their ingredients and culinary traditions. 

“I thought it would be fun to think of this as any nice escape, this lodge, on this journey,” O’Haire says.

What to order at Trophy Room

To step inside Trophy Room, you’ll need to gain entry from a host, who will usher you through a black door on the far side of Wren & Wolf’s dining room. The unmistakable door has a silver trophy mounted to it. Guests must normally relinquish their phones, securing them in a built-in antique wood filing cabinet before stepping inside Trophy Room. 

Though Wren & Wolf has a moody vibe, the lounge is even more dimly lit. Most of the light comes from the backlit bar and candles placed at tables. Once your eyes adjust, you’ll see the room is stacked with details. Figurines and books are arranged on shelves next to unique vessels used as bar glasses. You may catch a flicker of movement in the landscape paintings hung around the room.

The bar’s new menu, in another low-tech nod, is designed like a map. Its two dozen cocktails and mocktails are arranged by regions around the country, including the Pacific, Gulf Coast, Northwest and, naturally, the Southwest. The menu was created by O’Haire, Trophy Room’s Lead Bartender Damion Mendoza and bartenders from other Pretty Decent Concepts spots — Cleaverman’s Alec Gonzalez and Michael Lopez, who makes drinks at Filthy Martini Bar and Carry On.

Eclectic and playful options abound. There’s an amaro highball styled after cherry soda. A smoky clarified scotch tipple inspired by s’mores comes in an etched rocks glass with a bent spoon holding a bite-sized version of the campfire treat. 

The sip we’d be quick to order on a second visit tastes like a fresh agua fresca. Village of Hatch, a cocktail from the Southwest section of the menu, pulls in familiar flavors of green chile, cucumber, lemon and lime. 

Mendoza serves the drink in a cantarito, arranged on a small wooden plate with a small blooming saguaro cactus planted next to it. The spirit naturally must be some sort of agave, right? Mendoza instead opted for a blend of Hendrick’s Gin and Tanqueray No. Ten. The reason, he explains, is that the juniper and botanical notes of the gins help amplify the vibrant vegetal flavors of the produce used in this cocktail. 

A large sprig of mint emits a fresh, herbal aroma that hits before taking a sip from the metal straw. The cocktail pops with sweet citrus, cooling cucumber and green pepper-forward, lightly spicy green chile. The drink is refreshing enough to want to slurp, but complex enough to sip instead. 

After our visit, customers will again tuck their phones away before entering the bar. There’s something inherently cheeky about creating cocktails worthy of a photo or video but denying them that opportunity. O’Haire says it makes for a better time and may even inspire people to tell their friends, like in the “olden days.”

“You’re just living in that moment and waiting to go tell somebody how cool this was,” O’Haire says. “It harkens back to a time probably not experienced by some, and nostalgic to many others. I think there’s something kind of special about that.”

Trophy Room

2 N. Central Ave., #101