Billy Sunday
Billy Sunday holds at twelve because it remains one of the most ambitious cocktail rooms in Logan Square even after the neighborhood has grown up around it.
Merges opened Billy Sunday on Logan Boulevard in 2013 and built it around an ethos of sourcing out-of-production liquors, handcrafting bitters, and taking bar snacks as seriously as a restaurant course. The room leans into a late-19th-century Americana aesthetic — old photographs, antique fixtures, dark wood — without the speakeasy pantomime that ruins most bars attempting this register. Alex Bachman’s cocktail program has a particular affection for Fernet Branca and for odd organic ingredients that most bartenders wouldn’t think to open.
The daiquiri here became well-known early and remains worth ordering, but the more interesting work is in the stirred section. Billy Sunday is not the loudest bar on its block, and it doesn’t need to be. The food program — chicken liver mousse, smoked trout, dishes calibrated for a Sunday supper rhythm — gives it a seriousness that most cocktail bars lack.
- The house daiquiri
- A stirred drink from the Fernet-forward section
- House-made bitters cocktail with out-of-production spirit
