Like cocktails and secrecy?
Speakeasies are popping up across New England
Celebrated on March 24 each year since the 1980s, National Cocktail Day this year fell neatly on a Friday. Since you’re reading this after the fact, not to worry: World Cocktail Day is just around the corner, on May 13.
For those who require an excuse, there’s no shortage of opportunities to put your favorite mixologist to work. Later this year, Dec. 5 will bring us the 90th anniversary of Repeal Day, marking the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which ended the prohibition on alcohol established in 1920.
Inside the murky Manchester, N.H., watering hole known as 815 Cocktails and Provisions, one wall is devoted to a frequently repeated explanation about why Repeal Day is worth celebrating: because it marked, in part, “the return of the craft and the legitimacy of the American bartender.”
Located up a set of unassuming stairs overlooking the main drag of New Hampshire’s biggest city, 815 is one of a surprising number of speakeasy-style barrooms waiting to be discovered behind unmarked doors and camouflage entrances around New England. From Boston and Salem to Amherst and Portland, Maine, whether the theme is 1920s flapper or 1990s Gothic, hidden dramshops have proliferated over the last several years, as cocktail culture chases the allure of secrecy.
“It’s kind of cryptic, kind of a vampire dungeon in here,” said bartender Sian Quinn at 815 one night in early March. She’d just finished mixing an Old Fashioned for a visitor. The bar menu at 815 includes an elaborate brandy cocktail amusingly called the Overpriced and Uninspired and a cockamamie concoction featuring cotton-candy-infused vodka and a decidedly inspired name, I Wish Ryan Gosling Was on This Ferris Wheel. The second-floor space that 815 occupies is rumored to have once been a strip joint. Whatever it was in past lives, it’s definitely haunted, Quinn claimed.
There’s an old phone booth covered in stickers at the top of the stairs, just outside the entrance. Until recently, patrons were required to dial in to gain admittance. That practice ended during the pandemic, Quinn explained: too many people in close proximity while waiting in line.
Most modern speakeasies are designed for small, intimate groups, with low lighting and alcoves furnished with vintage settees. At the Bramhall in Portland, the underground space feels like a cavern, with brick and stone walls and stainedglass windows overhead, at ground level.
Across town, Lincoln’s is an exception to the speakeasy rule. After unlocking the riddle of its concealed basement entrance, visitors will find a no-frills atmosphere, a dive bar with $5, cashonly pours (no fancy drinks) and a decor dominated by images of the joint’s namesake, old Honest Abe.
There’s also a concealed door at the Archives, one of the newest speakeasies in the region, tucked into a cellar hideaway in Amherst. In Hudson, the craftcocktail oasis named Less Than Greater Than is also known as the Cobbler, after the deliberately misleading appearance of its Main Street facade.
That’s the case too with CodeX, in Nashua, N.H., which looks from the street like a used bookstore. You’ll need to walk around the corner and into a nondescript foyer to find the entryway, which resembles a bookcase.
Inside, the vibe is drawingroom cozy, with murals dedicated to bygone poets (Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman) and a soundtrack culled straight from the early years of radio (“Makin’ Whoopee,” “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”). Like some other speakeasies, CodeX has a limited menu meant for sharing — tapas and finger food.
They serve the classics, including martinis, Negronis, and the Sazerac, the New Orleans whiskey cocktail served in a rocks glass washed with absinthe. They’ll also fix you a Bee’s Knees, the drink devised during Prohibition to mask the harsh taste of bathtub gin.
At Deacon Giles Distillery in Salem, cofounders Ian Hunter and Jesse Brenneman produce not only gin but vodka, rum, and absinthe, as well as an array of canned cocktails. The walls of their tasting room, known as the Speakeasy Lab, re-create the legend of the 19th-century short story written by a temperance advocate named George Cheever.
Cheever, a man of the cloth, attempted to expose the wickedness of a local merchant with his fictionalized account of a Bibleselling distiller who hires a crew of demons to produce his spirits. John Stone, the real-life businessman portrayed as Deacon Giles, sued Cheever for libel, and won.
On a chilly Friday evening in January, the distillery hosted a Dolly Parton birthday celebration. Some showed up in blonde wigs and 10-gallon hats. “Nine to Five” flickered on a wall opposite the bar. Out by the vats, the pop-up proprietor of Speakeasy Donuts sold specialty doughnuts inspired by the woman of honor, including a rum-infused Mama’s Banana Pudding creation inspired by Dolly’s own Smoky Mountains recipe.
If you’re within the Boston city limits, there are few better ways to make an instant getaway than to get yourself inside Offsuit, the back-alley mystery lounge in the Leather District. Look for the tiny strip of paper taped near the service door and call the number printed there.
Inside, Tiffany lamps, a gas fireplace, and rows of vinyl records behind the bar add up to a cumulative effect as enticing as bar manager Ryan Polhemus’s creative fusions. There’s toasted coconut in a Radio Silence and shishito pepper in a Clickbait.
And when you’re ready to pay your tab, you can finish off the evening with a complimentary candy cigarette.