The Wink Nod is among a handful of modern-day speakeasies that dot the Greater Boston landscape. Some are easy to find, others aren’t.
Dim, sultry, and need-to-know: there’s no more evocative image in American drinking than the speakeasy. And they’re in fashion for the first time since Prohibition.
New York started the neo-speakeasy trend 15 years ago with Milk and Honey, famous for quality cocktails and a frequently changing phone number. Since then, bars around the country have embraced the aesthetic, concealing their entrances behind unmarked doors, phone booths and even entire restaurants. Many require a password to get in.
“There’s a romantic idea behind the speakeasy,” says Manny Gonzales, beverage director at Saloon in Davis Square. “We romanticize the ‘20s to the nth degree.”
The idea hit Boston in a big way in 2011, when the Hawthorne, Brick and Mortar, backbar and Saloon all opened within days of each other. That “exponentially increased the number of options” for cocktail drinkers in this city, says Matthew Schrage, Brick and Mortar’s bar manager.
All are discreet in one way or another. Saloon’s sign is a small light fixture, easy to miss. The Hawthorne and Brick and Mortar have no signs at all. Saloon and the Hawthorne are below ground level; Brick and Mortar is up a flight of stairs. And backbar, for its part, is deep inside a building, behind a restaurant, which itself is in a nondescript alley in Union Square.
There was little movement in the category until this spring, when Wink and Nod, a subterranean ‘20s-style cocktail lounge, opened in the South End. Wink and Nod embraces the speakeasy theme more actively than the rest. Curtis McMillan, the general manager, said he had “really tormented feelings about putting it up on OpenTable.”