Dolly’s rooftop perch boasts a tiny bar under a pergola with al fresco seating
Tomoko Matsubayashi
These days, it’s hard to imagine something North Park doesn’t have, aside from affordable homes. Eight thousand male barber shops? Man hair is so very attended to. Several world-class pizza joints? Yep. Quality used bookstores, framing shops, buzzy restaurants, brewery tap rooms, boutiques, even a new park? All of it. But, until recently, what it didn’t have was a rooftop bar. Not a single legal one.
That epoch of up-high barlessness ends with Dolly’s, a tiny pop-up al fresco cocktail spot on the topside of Hoxton Manor on University Ave.
The brainchild of Matt Bone (formerly of Old Man Bar in L.A. and Vino Carta and The Reading Room) and Will Pidd (who worked at San Diego J & Tony’s and Youngblood), Dolly’s is, well, tiny. True to their pedigrees, the menu is pared down but intentional: single selections of natural wines (red, white, pink, bubbles) accompany a classic cocktail list fortified with top-shelf, small-batch liquors. The decor is stark white and DIY, the roof wide open to the sky above and North Park Way to the south. Look over the edge and you get, well, a parking lot. If you’ve chosen this time to be picky, you’ve chosen wrong.
The “World’s Best Negroni”
Tomoko Matsubayashi
Dolly’s is also temporary. Bone says it’ll be open “as long as the weather stays good,” which in San Diego could mean until 2040 or when bitcoin mines induce a little impromptu ice age. He expects it to stay open until late fall and hopefully become a yearly thing. In the meantime, drinkers can expect vintage tipples like a freezer martini, Singapore Sling, or the “World’s Best” Negroni, made with Volume Primo, Italian vermouth that Bone says is “from one of our favorite bars in the world, Archivio, a world-class cocktail bar in Verona.”
Verona of course is the city of Romeo and Juliet, best known for its balconies. North Park is not. Until now.
