DEATH & TAXES

A Street Address That Tells You Something

Reno's bar scene has been sorting itself out for the better part of a decade, pulling apart into distinct registers: the casino-adjacent high-volume venues downtown, the Midtown corridor where spots like Arario Midtown and Centro Bar & Kitchen have established a more deliberate, food-and-drink-integrated format, and a quieter outer ring where a handful of independent bars operate with less foot traffic and more focus. Death & Taxes, at 26 Cheney Street, belongs to that third category. The name alone is a positioning statement: no softness, no aspiration toward lifestyle branding, just two certainties that everyone in the room already knows. That kind of naming tends to attract a specific crowd, and the crowd tends to shape the bar.

Cheney Street sits at a remove from the highest-density Midtown blocks, which means the clientele arriving at Death & Taxes is doing so intentionally. In cities like San Francisco, bars such as ABV have demonstrated that slightly off-center locations often produce more focused drinking environments than prime real estate does — lower ambient noise, regulars who know what they want, bartenders with space to think. The same logic applies here. What you encounter on Cheney Street is a bar that doesn't need to compete for passing attention.

The Craft Behind the Counter

The editorial angle that matters most in a bar like this is not the room's design or the number of seats — it's what happens at the counter. The American independent bar movement of the last fifteen years has produced a generation of bartenders who trained laterally across cocktail cultures: classic American formats, Japanese precision techniques, European bitters traditions, and the low-ABV structural thinking that venues like Kumiko in Chicago brought into serious critical conversation. Death & Taxes operates in the context of that broader shift.

Bars with names that gesture toward hard truths tend to favour programs that lean on spirits with character: aged whiskeys, bitter amari, high-proof gin. That's a generalisation, but it holds across enough comparable independent bars , from Jewel of the South in New Orleans to Julep in Houston , to function as a reasonable frame of reference. The bartender's craft in these environments is typically oriented toward balance and restraint rather than novelty. The question is not what exotic ingredient can be surfaced, but how a familiar spirit can be presented at its clearest. That discipline, when it's working, produces drinks that improve on the second visit because you understand them better.

The hospitality model at independent bars of this type also tends to differ from higher-volume venues. Without a long table service component or a full kitchen producing elaborate tasting menus, the bartender carries the entire register of the guest experience. Conversation, pacing, the decision about when to recommend a second drink versus a different direction , these are the skills that define the room. Reno's Midtown has enough activity now, with places like Beaujolais Bistro and Antojitos Colibrí contributing to a more textured drinking-and-eating circuit, that Death & Taxes doesn't need to be all things. It can be the specific thing it is.

Reno as a Drinking City

It's worth placing Reno in context before drawing too sharp a contrast with larger markets. The city has historically been understood through its casino economy, which created a hospitality culture oriented toward volume and entertainment rather than craft. That framing has been eroding. The population shift toward younger professionals and remote workers has generated demand for the kind of bar that Death & Taxes represents: no slot machines, no floor show, just a program built around what's in the glass.

Comparable transitions have happened in other mid-size American cities. Honolulu developed a serious cocktail tier , represented by venues like Bar Leather Apron , despite operating in a tourism-dominated economy that could have suppressed craft bar culture entirely. Frankfurt developed a small but precise independent scene, of which The Parlour is a signal example, against the backdrop of a city better known for finance and trade fairs than for drinking culture. Reno is following a pattern recognisable across cities that have a dominant commercial hospitality identity and a smaller, growing independent layer underneath it. Death & Taxes sits in that independent layer.

New York's bar evolution offers another reference point: the move documented at venues like Superbueno away from theatrical presentation toward substance-first programs has filtered into cities well outside the major markets. Reno drinkers who have spent time in those environments arrive at Cheney Street with calibrated expectations. That's the kind of customer a bar like this is built for. See our full Reno restaurants and bars guide for a wider view of what the city's independent scene looks like right now.

Planning Your Visit

Death & Taxes is located at 26 Cheney Street, Reno, Nevada 89501, which places it in a walkable zone from the core Midtown area but far enough from the casino strip that driving or rideshare is the practical option for most visitors arriving from downtown hotels. Current hours, pricing, and reservation availability are leading confirmed directly with the venue, as independent bars in this category update their operational details seasonally and the database does not hold confirmed figures at time of publication. The bar's format suggests walk-in is the primary mode of arrival , this is not a venue where booking a table weeks ahead is the norm , but confirming ahead of a weekend visit is sensible given how quickly good independent bars fill in mid-size markets when word travels.