At Bull’s Horn, bar food gets the attention it deserves

Bull’s Horn might be the only dive bar in the Twin Cities that makes its own American cheese.

Vibrant, robust, meaty and glossy, these cheese slices make for a hell of a cheeseburger, the kind that stops you midconversation. And while Bull’s Horn feels like a classic neighborhood bar — low-key, approachable, comfortably worn-in, kid-friendly even — it has one of the most thoughtful kitchens around, run by a chef who has redirected his fine-dining chops toward classic American bar food.

Roots run deep in Minnesota dive bars. Once disreputable, shady drinking dens, they evolved into refuges for the working class, functioning as the community’s central nervous system — what we now call a “third place.” Definitions may vary, but certain attributes are to be expected: cheap drinks, an absence of fancy cocktails, good jukeboxes or live music, dimly lit rooms full of dated decor and loyal regulars, wood paneling, pull tabs, meat raffles and affordable bar food.

Dive bar food tends to fall into a few camps. Some offer no-frills hot dogs or frozen pizzas, and some even gussy up the pizzas. Others have longer menus, with groaning baskets loaded with gloriously greasy classics. Then there are dive bars that are a little more ambitious, with scratch food like hand-battered onion rings or hamburgers made from beef ground in-house.

Bull’s Horn in Minneapolis is in that last category. And then Doug Flicker takes it several steps beyond.

Flicker’s career arc is well established in Twin Cities dining lore. His résumé reads like a syllabus in modern Midwestern fine dining: D’Amico Cucina, Auriga and Piccolo — the latter described by the Star Tribune as “one of the Midwest’s most food-forward joy rides” and featured on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations.” For decades, Flicker worked in tasting menus, innovative small-plates and high-end techniques, living under the perpetual pressure to stay ahead of trends.

In 2017, the same year Piccolo closed, Flicker and his longtime business partner and wife Amy Greeley bought the building that housed the seedy south Minneapolis tavern Sunrise Inn and opened Bull’s Horn. Drawing on lessons from Sandcastle — the popular seasonal beachside concession stand he ran on the shore of Lake Nokomis — Bull’s Horn was a pivot toward food that Flicker knew instinctively.

There are no pre-made, individually-wrapped portions of American cheese here. Instead, Flicker crafts uniform, 3-millimeter slices, about 125 a day, rolled, chilled and cut with industrial precision. The recipe includes yellow mustard, cheddar, Monterey Jack and the emulsifying agents sodium citrate and sodium caseinate, molecular gastronomy ingredients he learned to use during his fine-dining years.

The crucial ingredient, however, is rendered beef fat, strained nightly from the burger griddle’s drip tray and folded back into the cheese. The result is a cheese that tastes unmistakably and purely of a cheeseburger — a circular, closed-loop system of flavor that no commercial product could possibly replicate.

That cheese crowns a meticulously constructed burger: a soft milk bun from Denny’s 5th Avenue Bakery; crunchy vinegary pickles; cooling shredded iceberg; and a Big Mac–adjacent special sauce. The 4-ounce patties of a house-ground beef blend are smashed thin on a flat top, deeply browned with lacy, crispy edges.

The result is not a rich, bop-you-over-the-head beefy umami bomb. It’s balanced and classic, a harmony of contrasting textures and flavors. It sings to the angels a song of cheeseburgers. Still, it is not polite. It’s a little messy. I recommend ordering the double for the optimal meat-to-condiment-to-bun ratio.

Burgers and sandwiches come with acceptable, if pedestrian, potato chips. You can upgrade to a side for $3 (coleslaw, baked beans or mac and cheese, all serviceable) or fries for $3.50. The fries are frozen, and they’re fine. But I am a noted fry snob, and these fries break my heart a little. A burger of this caliber deserves much better fries.

There’s the showstopping, delicate Kentucky fried gizzards, which take two days to prepare. Or the irresistible nachos, with layering that looks like it would take an architectural engineering degree and years to perfect. And the delightful deviled eggs with the punchy giardiniera cheekily hiding underneath the paprika-flecked yolks.

Then there are the crackly chicken tenders that are so good the servers light up when you put in an order. Or the crispy, craggly pickle-brined fried chicken — the result of a complex, multiday process — every bite juicy and tremendous. And the dazzling housemade fried bologna sandwich that doesn’t get ordered much, but Flicker refuses to take the homage to his uncle off the menu.

Even the housemade veggie patty is a complicated work of art, a combination of barley, black beans, Parmesan, caramelized onions and beets that gets smoked, frozen, fried and then finished on the flat top. It should be on the radar of every vegetarian in town.

Flicker’s cheese is also a critical component in the magnificent, oozing grilled cheese sandwich. He makes a version without the rendered burger fat so the sandwich works for vegetarians, which is a very cool, inclusive and thoughtful touch. (You should probably get that cheese on the veggie burger, too.)

On the dive bar spectrum, Bull’s Horn is most certainly not on the gritty side. The bathrooms are clean and decorated with photos of Storm Troopers flipping patties. Kool-Aid is unironically on the menu. There are even kids’ trays that come with pudding. It closes at 10 most nights, 11 on the weekends.

In a casual, unglamorous, wood-paneled dive bar like this, your expectations for the food would probably be pretty low. That’s the magic here: Bull’s Horn quietly exceeds your expectations at every turn, with food that’s comforting and familiar, elevated and grounded.

Especially the cheese.

★★★

Address: 4563 34th Av. S., Mpls., bullshornfoodanddrink.com

Hours: Sun.-Thu. 4-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 4-11 p.m. Happy hour Mon.-Fri. 4-6 p.m.

Prices: A basic burger starts at $9.75, a five-piece bucket of fried chicken is $18. A tall boy of Hamm’s is $5. There’s a cash discount with an ATM on site.

Beverage program: Tap beer, bottles and cans. Wine. Cocktails are available, but the most complicated they’ll go is probably a Wisconsin Old Fashioned. A variety of NA options, including THC drinks, NA beers, ginger beer, lemonade, iced tea, and Kool-Aid.

Noise level: Reasonable.

Worth noting: Meat raffles are every third Wednesday of the month. There are rotating weekly food specials that might include a beer-battered walleye fish fry, a chicken pot pie with apple crisp, or a housemade footlong hot dog. Don’t miss the secret menu with the excellent Flick-o-Fish, a riff on the iconic Filet-O-Fish.

Service and hospitality: Sharp, tight, no-nonsense and friendly.

★★★★ Extraordinary. Restaurants operating at a nearly impossible level: ambitious, precise, and deserving of local, national and global attention.

★★★ Excellent. Highly recommended. Worth going out of your way for.

★★ Remarkable. A solid, dependable experience that delivers on its promise.

★ Very Good. Worth a visit, but inconsistent at times.

Zero stars: Not Good. Best to avoid.