Imagine being a stowaway in the dark bellows of a clipper ship, complete with the sounds of creaking wood and portholes with sea views and changing weather patterns. Or hop on an elegant early 20th-century train, sip a high-end cocktail, and enjoy scenery of fog rolling in over Louisiana’s bayou. These aren’t far-off voyages. They’re the settings of bars in Phoenix’s emerging world of cocktail theater—where elevated cocktails accompany immersive, performance art-esque settings.
Over the past few years, Phoenix has become home to three unorthodox spaces for these very realistic theatrics. Though bars have long hosted live acts like bands or burlesque, the bars Platform 18 (train themed), UnderTow (ship themed), and 36 Below (botanical wonderland) are a new breed. In these spaces, a bar becomes the stage and bartenders are the directors. Flip to the back of the menu at Platform 18 or UnderTow, and instead of just drink descriptions, you’ll meet the plotline of the night. Maybe it’s the fictional Hollis Cottley Pennington’s bootlegging adventures in the Rockies, or the story of Captain Mallory’s possible journey to find a shipwrecked Undertow. Read carefully and you’ll notice the cocktail names are weaved into the story as destinations or characters.
“We are storytellers,” says Mat Snapp, vice president of operations at Platform 18 and UnderTow. “Creating an environment to entertain that is positive, fun, full of wonder, nostalgia, and emotion is our goal.”
While elaborate storytelling is key to these bars’ appeal, the drinks play a starring role. Platform 18 and Undertow offer encyclopedia-sized menus featuring complex concoctions—classics and originals, alike. At Platform 18, you’ll find funky historical cocktails like Hot Pants (a bright pink, 70s-era recipe that melds tequila, grapefruit, and mint into an inexplicably delicious drink) and house-made boozy ice creams, like the Grasshopper. UnderTow offers tiki drinks, original and classics, such as the Scorpion Bowl cocktail—rum, cognac, orgeat, orange, lemon and nutmeg— served in a bowl complete with pools of flames on the rim. Grab some friends; you’ll need help.
Hidden in the basement of a coffee shop, 36 Below is a wonderland of lush greenery. There are wall-to-wall digital naturescapes and cocktails served in dramatic glassware, like a stone chalice shaped like a Greek goddess. The bar displays digital art, like fish swimming by from the porthole of a submarine , and even diffuses the room with aromas that reflect a quarterly theme, such as Roman Ruins or Aquatic Mediterranean.
Now, you might be rolling your eyes, wondering if all these bars amount to a cheesy show with crappy, overpriced drinks. Your skepticism is valid. But these bars are not like those overplayed speakeasy concepts where you squeeze through, say, a popcorn maker and click your heels twice to enter. The cocktails are pristine. In 2022, Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, like the Oscars of hospitality, honored Century Grand—the complex that houses Platform 18, UnderTow, and sister bar Grey Hen Rx—as one of the top ten “Best U.S. Cocktail Bars in the West.”
Visiting these spots takes some planning. Much like going to a Broadway show, you should try to reserve your seat in advance, dress to impress, and plan to be there for the entire experience—roughly an hour and a half. Take a look inside these Phoenix bars, where plenty of smoke, buried treasure, dramatic vibes, and most importantly, damn fine drinks are available.