'Introducing our secret': New speakeasy beneath Bootlegger's Axe Co. opens in downtown Port Huron

In a way, downtown Port Huron’s new speakeasy got its start from just a hole in the wall.

The owners of Wings Etc. purchased neighboring property along the Black River nearly four years ago and opened up Bootlegger’s Axe Co., a ground-level bar and restaurant, at 402 Quay St. earlier this year.

At the time, MoonCurser’s was still under construction down below.

By Friday, a week since opening, the new basement-level venue was decked out with prohibition-themed décor, sleek furniture, low lighting and a long bar. The concrete floors had been ground down two inches and layered in enamel, its ceiling covered in stamped tin, and its rear space near the water dug out of four feet of dirt and constructed into a rentable room for catered events.

But long before their arrival and any of that work, developer Gene Harrison promised the large, jagged hole in the wall — adapted to connect the main bar to a wine rack area — was already there.

“My son’s the first one that said, ‘Wouldn’t this make a cool speakeasy?’ And I gave him my patented, ‘Hell no, we’re not doing that,’” Harrison said with a laugh. “And then, we started gutting it out, and we took 20 dumpsters of trash out of this — not just this (building), but this basement — to be able to create the space. Once we got it empty, I looked at Rob and said, ‘You know, I think you’re right.’”

The father-son duo originally planned to open earlier this summer. Gene said some of the short delay was their own doing as they worked to train staff and ready the menu.

Although participants in a prohibition trolley tour with the Port Huron Museum got an early glimpse, MoonCurser’s opened Sept. 8.

“The wait staff was doing a good job at introducing our secret,” Gene said.

Gene and Rob Harrison recalled the research and planning that went into the speakeasy during a brief tour Friday.

For Rob, much of the effort went into the signature cocktail menu, which includes more than a dozen whiskey, gin, and other drinks, ranging from an old-fashioned and Manhattan to a whiskey sour and sidecar.

For his father, it was brick and mortar.

Seated from a cushy armchair, Gene Harrison referenced other features around the room.

The enclosed seating area they called the “Godfather booth.” And the long mirror behind the bar.

“That’s, in our mind, what we think a speakeasy should look like,” Gene said. “Because a speakeasy in the ‘20s would have been really rough. They would have had wood crates, cheap chairs, because they got raided so often by the police department. They got all busted up.”

There were saloons before prohibition, he said, and then there were bars that got fancier with time. They’re somewhere in between.

Rob Harrison’s research also got him their speakeasy’s name — something once synonymous with rumrunners.

“When they would come across from Canada on a really well-lit night with the moon out, they cursed the moon,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s such a cool name.’ That evokes all the like espionage-y, dark past (themes) of the rumrunning.”

Working to 'hit all the markets' with Bootlegger's, new speakeasy

For the most part, Gene Harrison said the feedback on everything at 402 Quay St. has been positive.

Sometimes, he said people are surprised Bootlegger’s is also a restaurant — the food being an area that Rob said, like with cocktails, they’ve also put a lot of work into the menu for — but that they seemed to be reaching a variety of patrons.

“I feel like we hit all the markets in Port Huron,” said Manager Jeff Bennett. “… And we just want to be a space for everybody.”

The entrance to MoonCurser’s is hidden in the foyer for Bootlegger’s.

On the mixology, Rob Harrison said they’ve put a big emphasis on the preparation with ingredients that make the presentation and experience when the speakeasy’s cocktails are made.

The biggest example, he pointed to, was fat-washing whiskey — or rather, processing the alcohol through a substance like butter that’s high in fat to help remove impurities and make “it more powerful and better tasting.”

“Fat washing takes 24 hours, infusions take 48 hours,” Rob said. “So, all those things we’re doing are (lengthening) the prep time for how we’re changing the nature of the spirit and what we’re providing guests.”

Despite the effort, Rob Harrison and Bennett said it required some adapting for newcomers.

“When it comes to like fat-washing or infusions, there’s not a lot of people in the market really doing it yet. I think it’s pretty much us, Renaissance Man, and Casey’s at this point,” Rob said. He was referencing downtown’s Renaissance Man Distillery and Cocktail Lounge and Casey’s Pizza.

But Bennett said he thought there was a demand in town for the experience they’re trying to build, while still aiming to ensure it’s accessible.

“When (they) understand what it is, they’re really perceptive to what we’re doing, and they’re getting behind it. They want to know the process,” he said, adding, “Our most expensive is 14.99. We want to give you that experience, but we are not going to charge you top dollar for that experience.”

For more information, visit Bootlegger’s Axe Co. on its Facebook page or at www.bootleggersaxe.com.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: 'Introducing our secret': Speakeasy beneath Bootlegger's opens in downtown Port Huron