Shhh, don’t tell anyone: Fort Lauderdale’s Xtreme Action Park has hidden speakeasy bar inside (and you’ll need a passcode to enter)
Stroll past the go-karts, trampolines and arcade machines and through a storage closet, and there’s a craft-cocktail bar hidden inside Xtreme Action Park in Fort Lauderdale.
Dubbed The Green Hat, the space is a dim, 25-seat speakeasy aglow in absinthe-green and accented with warm candlelight, barstools and black-leather benches, Spanish jazz and ‘90s hip-hop. The bar, converted over nine months out of an empty closet, quietly opened in December and serves 17 craft cocktails, with an upscale food menu to come that’s meant to be distinct from the cheap hot dogs and pretzels Xtreme’s concession area sells to the teenage crowd.
It’s designed as a cozy, adults-only respite from the brash bells and whistles of Skee-Ball machines and glow-in-the-dark mini-golf, says Joe Perugia, beverage director at the indoor theme park.
“Ninety percent of the customers in the building don’t even know about it, and we like it that way,” Perugia says. “Even the underage employees don’t know it exists, because why would they? When you’re in there, it’s exclusive, so we try to maintain that illusion.”
Speakeasy-style bars are nothing new in South Florida — the so-called speakeasy revival ignited some 20 years ago in New York and Chicago and migrated to Broward and Miami-Dade counties a decade later.
Even so, Perugia took his assignment seriously, and initially refused to advertise the bar on Xtreme’s website and social media. Instead, like a pit boss approaching high-rollers at a casino, Perugia only shared The Green Hat’s existence with a handful of over-21 customers “who didn’t bring children” to Xtreme, he says.
“In the beginning, I would personally walk around and invite people in and build traffic slowly and organically,” Perugia says. Last week, he went so far as to write a fictional Green Hat backstory on the bar’s website involving a notorious rum bootlegger — sporting the namesake green hat — whose speedboat wrecked in a torrential Atlantic storm.
So how do customers gain entry now? To find it, approach a long hallway near the escape rooms to a storage closet with a smart lock on the door. Then punch in a six-digit passcode. The pin changes weekly but isn’t tricky to find: It’s available through The Green Hat’s website and Xtreme’s social media, as well as on QR codes around the park.
In the next few months, Perugia says the bar plans to hire a chef to cook tapas-style appetizers and entrees, such as Wagyu beef sliders, pork belly burnt ends, charcuterie boards, poke tuna nachos, whipped feta dip and chickpeas deep-fried in truffle parmesan.
Behind the bar, uniformed in a green fedora and leather apron, is mixologist Iker Ibanez, who previously ran the cocktail programs at Fort Lauderdale haunts The Apothecary 330, Unit B and No Man’s Land.
Of the 17 craft cocktails ($15-$40) on the menu, a few use bourbon and vodka spirits from Fort Lauderdale entrepreneur Victor Harvey, whose Fort Lauderdale distillery is expected to open this year on Sistrunk Boulevard. (The drink menu will change sporadically.)
There’s the Mistress, a twist on the Prohibition-era Bee’s Knees cocktail, with Empress gin, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, honey syrup and foamy aquafaba, that’s served in a miniature ceramic bathtub with a tiny rubber ducky floating on top.
There’s also Gold Rush, blending Victor George Vodka, St. Germain, lemon juice, pureed lychee and rose bitters, and The Leviathan, a shot of reposado tequila, ancho reyes (a chili-flavored liqueur), passionfruit syrup and tepache (a fermented drink made from pineapple rinds).
The Lost at Sea includes Glenlivet Caribbean Cask scotch and two amaros, or Italian herbal liqueurs, along with a Pecan Old Fashioned, which combines pecan-soaked Fort Mosé Bourbon with demerara, Giffard banana liqueur and chocolate bitters.
But The Green Hat’s showstopper is undoubtedly the Octopus Roulette ($40), an octopus sculpture holding six shot glasses filled with rum and simple syrup and dyed inky black with activated charcoal.
“It’s called a roulette because one of the six shots is spiced with scotch bonnet pepper,” Perugia says.
Find The Green Hat inside Xtreme Action Park, 5300 Powerline Road, Fort Lauderdale. Visit TheGreenHatBar.com or call 954-388-2984.
