Cleveland’s speakeasy resurgence offers escape to bygone era
Speakeasy sets the mood with dim lighting above the bar. Photo | Michael C. Butz
By Madeline Winer
Those who descend certain staircases in search of a drink in two of Cleveland’s most vibrant neighborhoods will find themselves going back to a much more secretive time.
The speakeasy trend that’s made a resurgence in cosmopolitan cities like New York, Chicago and Las Vegas has found a home in Cleveland, where downtown’s Society Lounge and Ohio City’s Speakeasy offer patrons a mix of Jazz Age sophistication and Rat Pack swagger.
Nestled on East 4th Street, Society – which when busy requires your name be put on a waiting list – greets visitors with sultry jazz rhythms that at times match the rhythm of the bartenders’ shaking, stirring and pouring.
Society’s drinks are made using top-shelf and foreign liquors along with syrups made from scratch, freshly pressed juices, and a myriad of herbs and spices. For larger parties, drinks can even be customized and served in punch bowls, says Joseph Frederickson, Society’s beverage director.
“I like to find out each customer’s flavor profiles through just talking with them and seeing what they’ve liked,” says Frederickson, who sports a Salvador Dali-like moustache and adds a degree of showmanship to his drink mixing.
Beverage director Joseph Frederickson makes Society Lounge’s most popular drink, the Fourth Street Sour. PHOTO | Michael C. Butz
“We make a lot of classic cocktails,” says Frederickson, mentioning Manhattans, Mai Tais, mojitos and Moscow mules. “I try to see the recipes at the root and start off with simple ingredients. I start with the basics and improve from there.”
Society’s most popular drink is its Fourth Street Sour, made with house-infused rosemary vodka and hand-pressed lime juice. Frederickson tops it off with Chilean red wine and a rosemary sprig he burns to intensify the rosemary aromas.
A finished Fourth Street Sour, complete with a rosemary sprig. PHOTO | Michael C. Butz
As for the atmosphere, it hearkens back to a time when the spirits were high proof, care was crafted into each cocktail and underground hideaways were kept on the down low. Smartphones are tucked away for face-to-face socializing, large parties convene around small tables, and brushing elbows with the fellow next to you at the lively, crescent-shaped bar is common.
The dress code is as loose as ’20s morals. Young professionals and Baby Boomers alike come dressed in high heels, flats and casual evening wear; their counterparts in oxfords, polos, khakis and button-down shirts – with other styles in between.
Harley Magden, co-founder of Society along with his brother, Aaron, and friend Andrew Pucella, said he’s happy to see his modern speakeasy offer an unparalleled before-and after-dinner drink experience.
“We wanted to challenge ourselves and bring something totally different to Cleveland,” says Magden, who graduated from Solon High School and was a member of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple in Beachwood before moving to Washington, D.C. “We saw a need for a different type of atmosphere missing on East 4th Street. We did a lot of research and were inspired by the speakeasy-style lounges of New York and Chicago that brought back the idea of vintage cocktails of the Prohibition era.”
Magden recalled finding a New York City speakeasy called Please Don’t Tell.
“We couldn’t find it, and we didn’t know where we were. You had to go through this cigar and coffee shop, go downstairs to this telephone booth, pick up a phone and a door opens on the side of the telephone booth to let you in,” says Magden, adding he and his partners opted for a less “extreme” approach so Clevelanders could more easily enjoy Society Lounge.
An edgier speakeasy experience can be found along West 25th Street in Ohio City, where a glass chandelier at the back of McNulty’s Bier Markt signals when the aptly named Speakeasy is open for business.
isitors know Speakeasy is open when the chandelier at the back of McNulty’s Bier Markt is illuminated. PHOTO | Michael C. Butz
When the chandelier is illuminated, those in the know follow the downward-pointing hand projected onto the neighboring wall to escape the glass-clanging crowd of the Belgian beer hall for the Prohibition-era hideaway’s candle-lit existence.
Guests are greeted by a few “rules” at the bottom of the staircase: “Only those with class shall enter. Gentlemen shall behave like gentlemen. Ladies shall be ladylike. No rabble rousing or tomfoolery. No hooting or hollering. Attitudes and hats must be left at the door. … Respect the barkeep.”
“It was originally built as the sales department of the Fries & Schuele department store,” owner Sam McNulty says of the space, adding that during restoration of the building, which includes the McNulty-owned Bier Markt and Bar Cento, workers discovered a hollow section of the staircase, broke though and found a tiny room with shelves full of liquor bottles.
“It was like an Indiana Jones moment,” says McNulty of the room, which now serves as Speakeasy’s liquor closet. “We asked around about it, and one family that comes in said their grandparents’ parents and their grandparents both worked at the department store, and sure enough, during Prohibition, it was rumored that if you went down to the sales department, other sales were going on than those in the department store.”
PHOTO | Michael C. Butz
Its roots served as inspiration for McNulty and his staff when they decided to adapt the speakeasy concept to the space.
“It was born to be what it is,” says Michael Berkowitz, assistant general manager for McNulty’s Bier Markt, about the atmosphere of Speakeasy.
Its rustic, wooden stools and benches, dotted with crowds of cocktail-wielding 20-somethings – who dance to edgy electro-swing versions of Ella Fitzgerald hits and Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” – lead up to the bar where Adam Gullett uses ingredients from the West Side Market to create his craft cocktails.
“We like to use local product as much as we can,” says Gullett. “We try to keep the fake syrups out of it. Sometimes we make our own syrups with different infusions in there. Not a lot of people around here are doing that.”
Beneath the bottles of top-shelf liquor perched on a free-hanging shelf, Gullett concocts two of the cocktails on Speakeasy’s summer platter: the Hey Arnold, a spin on the classic bee’s knees cocktail made with London dry gin, Jorgensen’s Apiary honey from Olmsted Falls, English breakfast tea, lemon rind and a splash of Lillet Blanc, a French aperitif; and the Wasted Mason, made with Watershed vodka from a distillery in Columbus, fresh-squeezed orange juice for good flavor and a bit of acid, and some sugar and Earl Grey tea.
“I like the balance of bitter and sweet,” he said. “That’s what I look for in my cocktails.” js