Thirsty For An $80 Cocktail? Make Your Way To The Bad Luck Bar

DETROIT, MI — What does an $80 cocktail taste like? You can find out for yourself by sipping on the $80 'The Admiral' cocktail (which contains rum from the United Kingdom's final rationing to the British Royal Navy in 1970) at The Bad Luck Bar (1218 Griswold, Detroit). Hope you're thirsty.

The hot new cocktail bar may be the home to an $80 drink (along with cocktails ranging from "The Cup of Death" to "The Dream") , but it serves up plenty of Detroit grit. It's actually located down an nondescript alley and requires you to sidestep busted pavement patches and dodge divots. Once you find the equally nondescript alley way door and make your way inside the Bad Luck Bar, you're eye to eye with a blue neon evil eye sign, and aesthetically transported to a fancy, sophisticated and mystical cocktail bar.

The Bad Luck Bar is the brain child of a gentleman that strictly goes by the name 'Yani' along with restaurateur Dave Kwiatkowski, owner of the popular Detroit establishment, The Sugar House. The two poured blood, sweat, tears and countless hours doing everything from dreaming up inventive cocktails to installing mystical decor to create the Bad Luck Bar.

While the Bad Luck Bar is in its second month, Yani told Patch his business relationship with Kwiatkowski dates back years, "The Sugar House was Dave's first cocktail bar he opened in Detroit a little over five years ago. I signed up to work as his head bartender. A couple years ago, he found the location for the Bad Luck Bar and asked if we'd like to go into business and of course, I said I'd love to. Dave has the restaurant ideas and I'm doing cocktails, recipes and technique. We make a very good team."

As far as the style of the cocktails and bar, Yani says "I like to add modern research, modern knowledge and modern ingredients to classics to make them something cool. It's a back alley bar where James Bond villains would go to get a drink."

Would James Bond himself go there? Most definitely. While the Bad Luck Bar is home to 13 creative cocktails, the bartenders can "perfectly execute" any cocktail you dream up. Including martinis - any way you or 007 wants them. Yani explained, "We have so many ingredients and we'll make any cocktails. At Sugar House, they have on their menu 101 classic cocktails. That number is essentially just a made up number to recognize the gamut of classic cocktails. There are thousands and there are new drinks being invented every day. We're always taking that into consideration. I have a digital database and I'm at 994 recipes in my personal recipe book. We're constantly blazing a trail with anything new and fun that we can get our hands on but if you want the best Old Fashioned, we'd love to be the place you can go."

As far as dreaming up the 13 cocktails, Yani explains "I had a great opportunity to take a couple months off of working full time before going into Bad Luck to experiment. It was like when writers go into a cabin in the woods and work out some stuff and get a little crazy. That's what we did when opening the bar. Dave was in there with a couple other guys with our team physically building the bar and at night I'd essentially experiment the whole time. We have 13 drinks on our featured menu. All are original and each drink has its own identity. In creating the names, we paired the drinks with tarot cards and an Illuminati inspired design. Something a little magical and not too cheesy but recognizable for everyone around the tarot card theme."

When asked if there has been any bad luck at the Bad Luck Bar, Yani laughed "It's been minor bad luck. Dave fell off scaffolding and coincidentally got 13 stitches on his shin. He's fine. Every restaurant has unforeseen speed bumps that we hurtle over and we've been really lucky."

While there hasn't been much bad luck, there has been the threat of bad reviews. Yani shared, "People might feel at first that we're a bar doing expensive things or trying to be a little more than what we actually are and we've gotten a lot of 'Hey, who do you think you are? Michigan can't afford $80 cocktails. People aren't going to go in and buy drinks.' We've had two things happen. Someone came in and asked if they could talk with me and said 'I wanted to be honest with you. I came in here and wanted to write a bad review and say this place is stupid but I can't say anything negative. I love what you're doing.' The second thing is within 28 days, we sold through our first supply of rum used in the $80 Admiral cocktail. That was overwhelming in the sense we didn't expect to sell it that fast. We're already on our second one. Some reviews said 'No one was going to buy it' and 'Detroit wasn't high class enough to be into it.' But this shows people in Detroit appreciate what we're doing so we're going to keep at it."

The Bad Luck Bar is located at 1218 Griswold, Detroit.

Photos by Mera McKenna