It’s hard not to notice that neo-speakeasies have been abounding across Indian cities lately; one seems to open every couple of months. Mumbai just got Ocho, a suburban dram shop with an unexpected doorway. We’re tempted to not tell you where it is just to maintain a modicum of intrigue, but you’ll find out anyway with a few taps on Google or the ’gram. It’s a speakeasy, but with signage.
Even so, during our visit to Ocho shortly after it opened on Linking Road, we delighted in our little adventure of taking an elevator to the wrong floor and turning away from Japanese restaurant Megumi to walk down one flight of an abundantly potted staircase. There we encountered very serious-looking doorwomen and men in suits, manning a door marked ‘Danger’, and ‘Authorised Personnel Only’. This exercise is merely an amusing charade before you enter a vast, lush room with mirrors and Mayan sculptures, ribbons of light outlining a volcanic landscape on the ceiling, and rich deep-purple upholstery all around. There are dark sap-green surfaces surrounding tables that are set up for dates, big dinners, and later in the evening, debauchery. The journey to Ocho, and the distance it provides from screechy Santacruz below, supplies the insulation we sometimes need from Mumbai. This room, this bar, it could be in any city in the world.
Ocho, like any other modern Indian speakeasy, is different from its predecessors. For one, it has an Instagram page. More often than not, it’s also on Google Maps. And typically, it employs heavy PR machinery, which works to make sure everyone knows exactly where it is not-so-hidden—a serious departure from its more clandestine origins.
The word ‘speakeasy’ means to ‘speak quietly’, or discreetly. Booze bans in the US (and later in India) meant that information about these illicit, hidden Prohibition-era bars was shared reticently, purely through word of mouth, with people who could be trusted with such classified information. Inside, the hushed tone continued—to survive, a speakeasy needed to keep its volume low and stay unrevealed. In the US, speakeasies all but vanished for about 70 years from the early 1930s but were revived as trendy hidden-in-plain-sight spots by pioneering bars like Milk & Honey (2000) and Please Don’t Tell (2007) when the idea of drinking entirely legally but clandestinely became cool and popular. Other metropolises, even the ones that didn’t go through Prohibition, caught on.
In the early days of each of these spots anywhere in the world, from New York’s Apotheke to Hong Kong’s 001, a clutch of people would tell only a select bunch of friends about these bars with unassuming, unmarked doors. There was still something exciting and illicit about knowing about a new licit bar, about revealing its location and access only to people we thought were cool enough to share the space with. Finders, gatekeepers.
In Mumbai (or erstwhile Bombay), the speakeasy followed its own trajectory. Here, Prohibition ran from 1949 to 1972. The city’s version of speakeasies were Aunty Bars, where women would brew moonshine for sneaky drinkers who showed up with a serious and singular mission to imbibe. Served alongside were some chakna and salty, spicy, meaty snacks to help the hooch along—a potent, putrid, and sometimes even poisonous brew. Everywhere they existed, hidden bars were essentially places to rebel against prevailing Prohibition laws.
For drinkers today, the neo-speakeasy’s theme is a trendy #throwback to that subcultural movement, providing a sense of time travel and nostalgia for a pre-pre-internet era, but with better drinks. For its founders, modern speakeasies also tie into ‘community building’, a marketing strategy that’s the current catchphrase in the F&B industry.
Mumbai got its first few speakeasy-style bars in the mid-2010s, its partygoers entering PDT (Please Don’t Tell, its name and concept echoing NYC’s award-winning hidden spot) through a phone booth in Lower Parel. At The Local in Kala Ghoda, drinkers tapped out a set of letters and numbers on a keyboard in a tiny front office to be able to get past its doors.
PCO, which no one calls by its full name anymore (not Public Call Office but Pass Code Only), opened in Delhi in 2011 and in Mumbai in 2022, with password-protected gates. Delhi's celebrated Cocktails & Dreams is only one of half a dozen not-so-secret spots in the capital.
More recently, Bengaluru’s Kyoto-inspired ZLB23, deep in the recesses of The Leela Palace, was on Asia’s 50 Best Bars in 2024 as well The Nod’s year-ender list. In Chennai, to enter the three-month-old Madras Cocktail Company (aka MadCo), one must stride through a cafe, armed with a password gleaned via DM, so that the barista might let you in through the backdoor into the bar.
Goa’s newest speakeasy, Loulou—with its John Broadwood piano, vintage rugs, moody candlelit corners, and robust marketing plans—wants its entryway to simply be less obvious than the usual bar. “The idea was to bring [a] sense of discovery to Goa, where the best experiences often require a little curiosity,” says co-founder Nitin Wagh, whose bar is located above Assa House, a French eatery in Assagao. In the same neighbourhood, and just a few turns way, is Room One, a one-room-and-balcony setup atop Burmese eatery Sopo, where you can sip on top-notch cocktails under a skeletal figurine (because who needs chandeliers?) very, very late into the night.
On their Instagram page, Anjuna’s Bar TwelveForty (aka 1240), which has been around since early 2023, provides no geo tag or other clues to its location. It is probably the only bar in India that stays true to the idea of a speakeasy, candidly stating in its bio: ‘In the 1920s people escaped into hidden rooms to drink in peace. We still feel the need to do so.’ Says co-founder Anant Kataria, “The concept of a hidden bar accessed through a sandwich shop felt like the perfect blend of casual and sophisticated, a bit of mystery paired with high-quality cocktails.” And it does. In the basement, dim lighting, rich red and black tones, dark wood accents, a live jazz band, and no cell phone reception layer on the Prohibition-era vibe.
