cocktails

Photo by Tony Valainis

As every lounge in town rolls out its pre-Prohibition cocktail list—muddling herbs and berries until their wrists go limp—you get the feeling that it’s no shtick here.

Ordering a cocktail here means sitting back and watching while a dapper bartender in a proper vest and wide-knotted tie tinkers with ice cubes and orange peels. The carefully composed drinks are nothing short of cosmic.

“We restored an icon for the city,” says owner Dan McMichael. “And the city has responded.”

You’ll still find young hipster couples mingling with octogenarians, and councilmen brokering deals over a beer.

The stairway to the 1933 (named for the year Prohibition ended) leads back in time. At the top, waitresses in scandalously small red dresses cater to the suits in a lounge that’s as elegant as it is quiet.

With no windows in sight, hours can disappear at this Monument Circle man cave, one of the last bastions for cigar-smokers in the city.

The cocktail menu changes seasonally, so don’t go looking for “the usual.” And the bar offers high-concept snacks ranging from charcuterie to pickles.

Years before the speakeasy trend made its way to Indy full force, this establishment featured Jazz Age photos on the wall and classic cocktails like the Sazerac.

This tiny joint is a total dive. But the jazz musicians who perform there, and the toe-tapping art-schoolers and wine-sipping literati who crowd the shotgun bar to hear them, really class things up.

There are plenty of other holes-in-the-wall in Indy, and you can’t throw a dart (another Wellington pastime) without hitting a corporate bar marketing itself as a British-themed pub. But the leaded glass and woodwork here make most of those other places seem like a trip to the loo.

It has built a reputation for being the place to knock back a few drinks while taking in the best indie rock you haven’t heard yet.

You can’t fault owner Hal Yeagy for taking what was essentially a sad little shotgun saloon and turning it into a blues mecca, sprawling grownup amusement park, and Indiana’s most famous nightspot.

A bar crowd that had thinned (and aged) noticeably since the Aristocrat opened 80 years ago now seems to be reinvigorated, even on weeknights.

European and American football share time on the TVs here, but in the summer, most patrons crowd around the garage-door windows and focus their attention on the stylish denizens of Mass Ave.