Alley Bar

Traditional dive bar that's authentic to the spirit of dive bars. Loved it. Very cool booths & bar to sit at.

DO NOT order beer on draft here. They must never clean their lines in their taps because the beer always has off flavors. It's happened literally every time someone else has dragged me here.

8/7/24Just got back from a fairly dead night at Alley Bar, where I went to the bathroom for like 5 minutes, to come back and see that the bartender had dumped out the remaining 3rd of my absurdly expensive, stingily poured drink. Upon asking her about it, all she had to say was "it was all ice", which is complete BS. Don't go here, your money will be better spent at literally any place in Ypsilanti, where the pours are generous and cheap, and the bartenders won't jack your drink and make up weak excuses for their F ups. Be better. *spits*

Pretty good bar, definitely for an older crowd than college students. They have a fun cocktail menu but it's not too big. However, the drinks are not too expensive. They have a lot of comfortable booths' My friend and I came and had a great time so would recommend!

Just a good old school bar. Bartenders are excellent with good conversation. The price was right.

This place is a TIGHT fit! It's a very narrow locale and it gets packed. Packed enough that there was a waiting crowd one time we walked past it. Our group got in on a slow night I guess. We found a nice couch area by the entrance and hung out there.Loud music of cool genres playing. Very dim lighting. A kind of "come as you are" atmosphere. Overall a cool vibe.We ordered a couple of cocktails. I got the Smoke Signals. It was ok, but too sweet. I had to let the ice melt a bit, to water it down a bit. That also watered down the experience for me a bit. Next round I stuck to my usual coke and whiskey. Preferred not to take a gamble with another cocktail.The cocktail experience and the tightness cost my review a couple of stars. But aside from that, the vibe is cool and it's s nice place to come drink late night when in the city.

Came here for a night cap and some music. Wait staff was very accommodating, drinks were outstanding but it just a tad to warm inside on the hot and humid night for us. Pickle Backs and Bourbon Bramble are highly recommended!

I'll start on a high note; the cocktails we got from Alley Bar were so delicious! I got a gin cocktail (Netflix and chill) and my boyfriend got a Old Fashioned. They were fantastic cocktails for sure, and we both really enjoyed it.Now onto the room for improvement. The music was absolutely all over the place...it seemed like 5 different people were fighting for the aux cord. A Katy Perry song would play until the chorus then immediately play a slow Lumineers song then cut out completely for 2-3 minutes, then come back BLASTING some rock song. It was very interrupting and distracting. I know it sounds like something small to upset someone but it ruined the whole aesthetic of the bar and my experience there. I'll probably go back because the cocktail was truly a dream, but I'll brace myself for the audio chaos.

Great service and vibes from Ben and Stacy. We are from Texas and highly recommend this bar to come have some drinks and good conversation.

Came here bar hopping with my husband. He went up to order drinks while I sat at a booth. A server came up and asked for my order and I informed her that my husband was ordering and I did not know if he was at the front of the line. She said no worries I see him If his order is in I'll forget about yours. Sounds like a plan. My husband comes with drinks. Great it's handled he opened a tab. Suddenly the bartender comes up and accuses us of trying to get drinks for free and distracting her from making drinks by pulling her from the bar? She demanded we pay for the first two drinks. She was a red head. If they brought us all four drinks we would have paid. As far as I knew my husband opened a tab? It was an extremely confrontational encounter for absolutely no reason. It was a miscommunication we had never been to the bar we were unsure of the ordering system. We did not know there were servers to begin with. Someone needed to just ask us for a card and we would have handed it over. The entire encounter was not necessary. It was escalated to a degree that I have not encountered in the high end bar scene. Ultimately, I couldn't even enjoy the drink and dropped it off by the bar. I would be careful with coming into this bar as a newbie. Wait for someone to speak to you and follow their lead. Either way the drinks are a bit lack luster to risk that kind of encounter.