A speakeasy, by definition, implies illegality. The connotation of the word may lend itself to a certain aesthetic or ideal, perhaps even a set of rules for how to comport oneself, but that’s all superfluous to the idea of explicit illicitness. As Merriam Webster defines it, a speakeasy is “a place where alcoholic beverages are illegally sold.”
I’d wager that you’ve walked through the perhaps unmarked doors of an establishment calling itself a speakeasy once or twice, though. Of course, we’re living in a world where people also slap the word moonshine onto the labels of fully taxed and government-approved bottles of alcohol for sale. The Cambridge Dictionary tells us that moonshine is “alcohol that is made illegally,” rather than just the implication that it’s an unaged corn or sugar-based hooch made, perhaps, with jerry-rigged equipment.
A real speakeasy may even be a place in which real moonshine is sold. Yet neither term is used with strict adherence to its definition. So what even is the speakeasy anymore? What is it trying to accomplish? Does it even exist?
What’s universal is that bars touting themselves as speakeasies, or perhaps as speakeasy-inspired spaces, create a layer of visual and conceptual separation from their bar operations and the outside world. You may know the bar is there, but still have to determine which door is theirs, how you’re supposed to get inside, or what you’re supposed to do once you do.
That mystique and uncertainty adds intrigue and a faux feeling of illicitness even for something that’s perfectly above board: being a person of age using legal tender to buy a drink from a licensed establishment in a city, country, and year in which all of these things are quite licit as well as socially acceptable. What we think of as speakeasies are still enormously popular around the world. Yet none of them actually operate as one, even if they take cues and concepts from their forebears.
Can a Famous Speakeasy Be a Speakeasy?
For the sake of argument let’s assume that when we’re discussing speakeasies, what we’re really referring to are hidden bars and, most likely, hidden bars that pay homage to classic cocktails, many of which originated in or were popular during Prohibition. It was the modern speakeasy — that legal but hidden bar — that carried the non-tiki torch forward when the cocktail renaissance kicked off in earnest. Milk & Honey in 2000, Employees Only in 2004, and PDT in 2007 are but three cases in point that debuted at different stages of early-era cocktaildom.
“I think the purpose of a speakeasy was to re-showcase the cocktail scene from what was a very good era for cocktails in the world, most of them focused on the Prohibition era from the U.S. or based on classic cocktails from the pre-Prohibition era,” says Tato Giovannoni, founder of Florería Atlántico. The Buenos Aires bar and its multiple outposts are famously found behind the visage of street-side florists. Yet, he’s adamant that the concept is not one of a speakeasy.
For one thing, there’s the whole famously part of that. The bar has been ranked as high as No. 3 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. It’s named after a flower shop. Everybody knows it’s back there somewhere behind those bouquets.
Well, almost everybody.
“It still surprises me when people come in and they’re shocked, because after 12 years and all the recognition you might believe that people already know what they’re going to find, but no, people are still surprised,” Giovannoni says with a laugh. “It’s something that is crazy and I love it.”
“If your main guy is going around hosting international events, maybe you’re not a speakeasy!”
Even before the accolades, though, Giovannoni never intended the bar to operate as or be perceived as a speakeasy. “I never wanted to be a speakeasy, and in fact, we’re not a speakeasy. We don’t tell a story about the Prohibition era, we’re a hidden bar,” he says. “We have no passwords, no codes, the door is open to everybody.”
The Surprising State of the Speakeasy
When the modern speakeasy arose, such bars were able to convey the idea of cocktails as a serious pursuit, both in their making and their consumption, and the hushed environs and seated-only crowd offered a studious atmosphere for learning as much as imbibing.
With well-made cocktails now a ubiquitous and expected component of near any establishment serving alcohol, what of the modern speakeasy today?
The world’s No. 1-ranked bar, Mexico City’s Handshake Speakeasy, refers to itself as such. It’s located in a city where the idea of the hidden bar is alive and well. Hanky Panky resides behind the auspices of a taco shop. Licorería Limantour, meanwhile, has added a backroom bar within a bar at its original location. The space is intended to feel like a living room hosting a chill house party, and doesn’t take reservations. If you know you know, in other words.
Of course, if you didn’t know, now you do. Besides playing spoiler over here on my own, any would-be modern speakeasy or hidden bar has been discussed ad nauseam via Yelp and Google reviews telling readers just which unmarked door to knock on four times in order to gain access, not to mention the endless stream of TikTok videos and Instagram Reels that blow up those spots further. That hidden #IYKYK secret is actually quite readily revealed.
“I would say Japan has more than anywhere else in the world. In Ginza, they’re like clubs where you go and need to know somebody to know about it and get in.”
At Hotel Heron in Alexandria, Va., Francis Hall resists using the word speakeasy for its unmarked, hidden-in-plain-sight but not concealed cocktail bar. “I think the initial thought was that we didn’t want people not to walk in the door just because they hear the word speakeasy,” says Betty Woodward, the hotel’s director of food and beverage. “There’s no hidden password or secret knock. It’s a cocktail lounge with welcoming bartenders and some really great drinks.”
Is a hidden bar tucked behind a taco shop or deli counter or flower store, perhaps accessed only by special password or secret knock or decoded puzzle, a speakeasy at all? Not to name names, but what with the international guest shift circuit, the aforementioned bar lists, and the power of the internet on its own, it kind of puts the kibosh on the idea of a speakeasy.
“If your main guy is going around hosting international events, maybe you’re not a speakeasy!” says Keith Motsi, head bartender of Virtù at the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi, giddy at the notion of quashing faux speakeasies. “What we have to do is to redefine them as hidden concepts.”
Member’s Bars & Hidden by Happenstance
The need for the studious, serious speakeasy has surely dissipated, but it’s important to keep in mind that there’s a pretty damn big drinking world outside the likes of New York and London. Your hood might be in the third or fourth or who knows what wave of cocktail bars and culture, perhaps showcasing a dash of hearty rebelliousness rather than hushed righteousness, but there are plenty of places that aren’t. “The year was 2016, and Tallinn barely knew what a Whiskey Sour was and the goal was to bring cocktail culture in,” says Jiří Mališ, bartender at Whisper Sister in Estonia’s capital city, describing the place’s debut.
Described as a “speakeasy style bar,” Whisper Sister operates in a basement that once served as an escape room, and is found behind an unmarked door, with guests needing to call downstairs to be let inside. The operation came to be the bar’s identity, and lent it an aura of cocktail respectability in a part of the world where you couldn’t take refined classic cocktails as a given.
“If you really want to do it the right way, without social media, without Google Maps, then good luck running some front to cover the staff costs after your team serves five guests through a Thursday night.”
The bar ended up hidden by happenstance, though, as an ordered sign never showed up on time, and the space they found just happened to be downstairs. “That had benefits which we reap from today — stunning ceilings and lower rent — but it also meant that we are behind double doors and due to offices upstairs, it’s quite private,” Mališ says. “So we leaned into the speakeasy atmosphere and made the initial obstacle a part of our identity.”
In Tokyo, heralded as one of Asia’s finest drinking towns, what you’ll find instead of speakeasies are semi-secret members’ bars. “I would say Japan has more than anywhere else in the world,” Motsi says. “In Ginza, they’re like clubs where you go and need to know somebody to know about it and get in.”
As Mališ touched upon, sometimes the hidden basement bar happens to serve more of a bottom-line need than operating in secrecy. “It’s much cheaper to go underground,” Motsi says. “Mostly it’s just the rent. Then people give it names. It’s not a speakeasy, it just may be more convenient to operate, mainly.”
However, these word-of-mouth operations actually serve as truer modern interpretations of the speakeasy than anything else. There’s an element of privacy and restriction, or for Motsi, what he sums up in a word as “curation.”
A members’ bar or word-of-mouth bar curates the crowd, sets the scene, limits capacity, and restricts access. “If you think about it, speakeasies are members’ clubs with like-minded people getting together,” Motsi says. “They don’t just let anybody in; they’re mini clubs where you know somebody. Member’s bars are where it’s at now.”
Such concepts also happen to work well with the mindset of many Japanese business owners. “People are humble in some ways, they don’t like to talk about themselves,” Motsi says.
Even hidden bars that are earnest in their intentions to remain hidden also really do want to be found. There’s a need to operate as a viable, profitable business, after all. “If you really want to do it the right way, without social media, without Google Maps, then good luck running some front to cover the staff costs after your team serves five guests through a Thursday night,” Mališ says.
“Don’t you want people to come to your bar and enjoy the buzz, no pun intended?” Woodward says. “I do! What really motivates people now is a unique experience.”
The Speakeasy Is Dead. Long Live the Hidden Bar.
Let’s perhaps listen to what the dictionaries tell us, not to mention the bar owners and operators who are disavowing the terminology. Speakeasies are no longer with us, not truly. And that’s OK.
Once the Empire was defeated, the Rebellion was just the new ruling government. Too nerdy? All right.
Once Prohibition was repealed, the speakeasy was just a bar. You can’t have the latter without the former; and some would say, whenever and wherever the former is enacted, the latter is inevitable. We could get very yin and yang about this if we wanted to.
“Holy f*ck, what do you mean you are a speakeasy if you’re on Instagram?” Mališ wonders. “The speakeasy is dead, there are no cops to worry about.”
Speakeasies, by definition, disappeared at the end of Prohibition. Hidden bars, though, aren’t going anywhere. As long as you know where to look. “There are more modern versions of the idea now, and I think there will still be hidden bars, not speakeasies,” Giovannoni says.
“Whatever the speakeasy is, it’s dead, it died in 1933,” Motsi says. Yet the allure of concealment remains strong. “Hidden bars are here, and hidden bars are here to stay.”
