The Redlands Underground Restaurant and Bar

Below Street Level in a Citrus Town

Downtown Redlands sits at an odd crossroads in the Southern California drinking and dining map. The city built its identity on orange groves and Victorian architecture, and its East Citrus Avenue corridor reflects that heritage: storefronts occupy historic buildings, and the foot traffic runs toward breweries and casual spots rather than the kind of serious bar programs you find in Los Angeles or San Diego. That context matters when placing The Redlands Underground Restaurant and Bar. Descending below street level at 19 East Citrus Avenue, Suite 103, you enter a bar and restaurant that operates at a different register than most of what surrounds it in the Inland Empire.

The underground format is not affectation. Subterranean bars carry a particular atmospheric logic: ambient noise from the street drops away, lighting operates at a lower threshold, and the physical act of going below grade creates a psychological separation from the outside. These are conditions that suit a considered cocktail program, where the details of a drink benefit from attention rather than distraction. The format has precedents in more established bar cities. Allegory in Washington, D.C. and Kumiko in Chicago both deploy architecture as part of the bar's argument, where the physical environment frames the drinking experience as something intentional rather than incidental.

The Cocktail Programme in Context

California's independent cocktail bar scene has matured considerably over the past decade, with serious programs now extending well beyond San Francisco and Los Angeles. ABV in San Francisco established a template for the high-effort, spirit-forward California bar, while the broader national conversation has been shaped by programs like Canon in Seattle, which built one of the deepest spirits libraries in the country, and Jewel of the South in New Orleans, which anchored its identity in historical American cocktail tradition. What these bars share is a commitment to program depth over volume: the drink is the point, and the format supports that commitment.

For the Inland Empire, a bar operating at this level of deliberateness is relatively rare. The region's drinking culture skews toward craft beer and casual wine bars, and venues that build around a cocktail program as a primary identity occupy a smaller niche. The Redlands Underground positions itself in that niche, with a subterranean format that signals intent before you reach the bar. Whether the program delivers on that signal at the level of the city's most serious comparable venues is a question that individual visits will answer, but the structural conditions for serious bar work are present: an enclosed environment, a below-grade address that filters out casual foot traffic, and a combined restaurant-and-bar format that allows the drink program to anchor rather than supplement the experience.

Across the country, bars that have earned sustained recognition tend to pair technical ambition with a clear point of view. Julep in Houston built around Southern spirit traditions. Superbueno in New York City frames its program through Latin American spirits and flavors. Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu operates at a precision level that draws comparisons to Japan's approach to the craft. Each of these venues has a legible identity that extends beyond the drink list itself. For a bar in a smaller Inland Empire city to sustain relevance, a similarly clear creative framework tends to be the differentiator.

A Restaurant That Drinks Seriously

The combined restaurant-and-bar model has its own internal logic, and it differs from both the standalone cocktail bar and the restaurant with a perfunctory drinks list. When the two sides of the format are properly integrated, the bar program shapes how you approach the food, and vice versa. Bitter and Twisted in Phoenix operates a large program across both food and drink with the cocktail list driving the identity. Bar Kaiju in Miami works within a creative format where the drink and food sides reinforce each other.

At the Redlands Underground, the underground setting creates a natural framework for that integration. The physical space demands a slower pace than a sidewalk terrace or a high-ceilinged dining room, and a slower pace is conducive to the kind of multi-course and multi-drink progression that makes the combined format work. Redlands is also a city where a venue operating at this register has limited direct competition, which means the Underground functions less as one option among many and more as the address in its category for residents of the broader Inland Empire.

For comparison, international bar programs operating in smaller or less obvious cities have used geographic positioning as part of their appeal. The Parlour in Frankfurt on the Main built a program in a city not primarily associated with cocktail culture, and its positioning in that context became part of its identity. The dynamic is familiar: a serious bar in a city where serious bars are not the norm carries a different kind of weight than the same bar in London or New York.

Planning Your Visit

The address is 19 East Citrus Avenue, Suite 103, in downtown Redlands, California 92373. The suite number signals the below-street-level entry, so look for the access point rather than a prominent street-level frontage. Redlands sits roughly 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles via the I-10, and the downtown area is walkable once you arrive. Current operating information is worth checking before visiting.