Purgatory Craft Beer and Whiskey

The whole back of Purgatory is whiskey — a thousand and fifteen bottles, lit, running twenty feet up, with a rolling ladder to reach the top of it. The night we went we took the Libby's Flight: Old Forester 100, Knob Creek 9 Year, and a Small Batch Larceny. None of them were cheap and every one of them was worth it.

Purgatory sits in the historic Bennett Block on Main, and the wall is the whole idea — you build your own flight straight off it, which is exactly as dangerous as it sounds. What surprised me was the kitchen. A whiskey bar's food is usually there to keep you upright, and this one isn't: the smoked salmon board, the pork belly tacos, and an elk burger they're right to be famous for. The service was as good as the room, which is saying something.

Go in knowing the good pours are priced like good pours — a flight off that wall adds up in a hurry, and that isn't a complaint so much as arithmetic. They run till eleven most nights and half past midnight on a Friday or Saturday, which makes this one of the later rooms downtown and one of the few genuinely worth staying up for.