High-End Downtown Bar Arrives Thursday With an $80 Cocktail

Downtown Detroit’s secretive cocktail bar project The Bad Luck Bar is bracing for its big debut this week in Capitol Park. The latest development from empire builders the Detroit Optimist Society hosted private soft openings this weekend, which partner Dave Kwiatkowski teased in a takeover of industry magazine StarChefs’ Instagram account.

The Bad Luck is a collaboration with former lead bartender for The Sugar House, Yani Frye. Kwiatkowski told Eater in August that the bar would be “very high-end” — cut from the same cloth as London’s Artesian, Night Jar, and Chicago’s The Aviary. At only 800-square-feet the lounge would be very exclusive, seating only around 30 patrons.

As The Detroit Free Press critic Mark Kurlandchik reports, Kwiatkowski has kept his word. Located down a back alley behind luxury apartment building The Albert, the bar is slated to open its doors to the public on December 8 with a more focused (and pricier) approach to cocktails than Detroit has seen in the past. Frye’s menu features 13 Tarot card-inspired drinks, supported by “high-end and rare liquor bottles” displayed on the bar’s illuminated shelves. The Dream, for example, is served in a milk bottle dusted with pink Campari powder filled with cereal flavored cream, cinnamon-infused whiskey, buckwheat honey, and egg for $28. Another, dubbed The Admiral features an “incredibly rare” rum and costs $80.

If you’re wondering who is going to pay that much for a drink in Detroit, you’re certainly not alone. Of course, this is probably not a place designed for casual after work drinks. “The attention that the Detroit restaurant scene is getting bolsters our confidence for doing something like this,” Kwiatkowski tells the Free Press. Whether the city can support this type of venture time will tell. Those who attended the preview are already offering sneak peeks social media. Take look below.

• Experimental Cocktail Bar Aims for Fall Debut in Capitol Park [ED]

• Bad Luck cocktail bar to open Thursday in Detroit [Freep]

• The Most Anticipated Detroit Restaurants and Bars, Fall 2016 [ED]