There is a sports bar inside the Rushmore Mall. That sentence sounds like a warning, but stay with me.
Lucky’s 13 Pub occupies a corner of the mall’s east end, near the food court entrance, which is not where you’d expect to find a place worth writing about. The parking lot outside smells like Cinnabon and exhaust. You walk past a Sunglass Hut to get there. And yet, on a Tuesday evening, every booth was full and the bar had maybe four open stools. That’s not nothing.
The room is dark in the way bars used to be before every restaurant decided natural light builds character. There are televisions everywhere — some showing the same game, some not — and the noise level sits at that comfortable middle volume where you can still hold a conversation without leaning in like you’re confessing something. The booths are wide and the seating is real, not the thin-cushioned afterthought you get at chain spots. Someone made actual decisions when designing this place.
The menu is longer than it needs to be, which is usually a red flag, but Lucky’s gets away with it because the kitchen seems to understand that execution matters more than range. The burger is the right call. It comes out properly cooked, the bun holds together, and the fries are thin and salted correctly — a detail that sounds minor until you’ve eaten a plate of underseasoned fries in a disappointing bar, which happens constantly. The pretzel with beer cheese is the kind of appetizer that makes you order another round just to have something to keep dipping. The beer cheese is warm and genuinely cheesy, not the pale yellow paste that passes for it elsewhere.
The tap list leans toward regional and craft options without going full beer-nerd on you. You’ll find local stuff alongside familiar names, and the bartenders know what’s on without making you feel like you’re being quizzed. Drinks come out fast. The service is the kind where people check on you without hovering, which is rarer than it should be.
Prices are fair for what you get. A burger, fries, and a couple of beers will run you somewhere around twenty-five dollars, give or take. Appetizers are mostly in the eight-to-twelve dollar range. Nobody’s going to lose sleep over the tab.
The clientele is a genuine cross-section of Rapid City — families finishing up mall errands, people stopping in after work, a few tourists who figured out that the hotel bar wasn’t worth it. On weekends when there’s a game on, the place fills up properly and gets loud in the way a bar is supposed to get loud. If you want quiet, there’s a Panera two hundred yards away.
Is this the most remarkable place in the Black Hills? No. But it’s reliable, which is its own kind of virtue. When you’re in the mall against your will and someone in your group starts eyeing the Subway, Lucky’s 13 is a genuinely better option than the situation deserves. Walk past the Sunglass Hut, find a booth, and order the burger. You’ll be fine.
