
As the head bartender at Saint Leo, an acclaimed Italian restaurant on Oxford’s central square, Joseph Stinchcomb helped bring in big accolades: The restaurant’s bar program was a semifinalist for a James Beard award in 2019. He also brought controversy. When Stinchcomb crafted a Black History Month-themed menu a year earlier, diners weren’t quite sure what to make of its drinks—like Blood on the Leaves, which was named for a lyric in Billie Holiday’s searing anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit.”
After complaints poured in, the menu was pulled. “That kind of shaped my drive and inspiration to own a space,” Stinchcomb says. Part of the problem, really, was how few conversations were happening about race in Oxford, which made the topic feel more forbidding than it should. It didn’t help that there were only two Black-owned businesses on the Square.

So when the owners of the Lyric, Oxford’s marquee music venue, inquired whether Stinchcomb might open a cocktail bar in the theater’s old ticket office, he jumped at the chance. Partnering with Saint Leo’s former operations manager, Ross Hester, Stinchcomb opened Bar Muse in October 2021, adding a third Black-owned business to the mix.
As the duo developed the bar, Stinchcomb was pursuing other efforts to build a better Oxford. Last year, he won a grant for a proposal to use good food to start deeper conversations, especially between Black entrepreneurs and potential investors. Bar Muse itself has hosted minority happy hours as a part of the program. “It’s been cool to have Black people come in here and enjoy themselves, and just be able to be themselves,” Stinchcomb says.
The Bar Muse menu, which rotates every few weeks to showcase a new theme, maintains Stinchcomb’s penchant for pop-cultural references; one recent menu was built around cocktails named for characters from HBO’s The Wire. (“By far and away the best television show ever,” Stinchcomb says.)
It’s a small space—264 square feet, with twenty-five seats—which in a bar like this is an asset: It allows for a focus on drinks that Stinchcomb truly loves. “That’s the beauty of owning the space,” he says. “To be able to push boundaries with your guests and get them a little bit out of their comfort zone, and get them to really enjoy something that wouldn’t necessarily venture out to try.”
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Omar Comin’, made with coriander-infused scotch, mango, ginger, lime, and cardamom