Martini's   

1313 Nicollet Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55403
612-359-2165

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A typical hotel lounge in the Twin Cities can be pretty Spartan; with a captive audience, who needs to worry about style, right? The Millennium Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, however, is all about style, and they did the typical hotel lounge several better by infusing Martini's with a playful use of color and an unusual drink menu. The color comes in the form of boxy, plush chairs, done up in complementary tones of purple, maroon, mustard, green and blue. The drink menu is an even bigger surprise. Unlike the now cliched collection of fruity martinis at other places (which might be served in a martini glass but hardly qualify as such), the drinks here stick pretty much to the tried-and-true vodka or gin and vermouth formula, spicing it up in inventively Minnesotan ways; the Danish Martini is made with a Scandinavian spirit called Aquavit, and the Twin Cities Martini contains both gin and vodka. -- Jon Hilgers