Donna

Interior photo by Julia Gillard, 2017. For the last decade of my life, Donna Cocktail Club in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn has been my biggest undertaking. It is a place that has brought me so much joy and pride, and so much struggle and heartache. As I write this its no different. I was a bartender at Marlow & Sons in the summer of 2010. Customers... flooded our doors, and I was struck that there was nowhere obvious nearby to send them for a drink while they waited for a table to open up, or after dinner if the evening had momentum. I was enamored of Andrew Tarlows (and his partner at the time, Mark Firths) ability to create indelible dining experiences in environments that were stylish, but also relaxed and worn-in. A place where you could down oysters and cloudlike chicken liver mousse, while guzzling glass upon glass of Loire Valleys finest, all in a ripped band t-shirt and dirty jeans without feeling out of place. Hell, I was in a band myself. Many of my friends, co-workers, and customers were too. They were also photographers, choreographers, clothing designers, actors, academics, farmers, butchers, writers and Im sure a few, all of the above. Elegant spaces for dirty kids is how I summarized it at the time. Inspired by my eternally elegant mother Idalia, and her home-country Honduras, Donna feels like a post-colonial Catholic church. I wanted our menu and back bar to focus on the most popular spirit of Central America, rum. Rum was a category both incredibly diverse and equally overlooked by cocktails bars of the time, often obsessed with whiskey, gin and amari. Jeremy Oertel, the opening head bartender (who reasonably refused to give up his shifts at Phil Wards legendary Mayahuel when he took the job) introduced me and our customers to the complex world of agave distillates beyond Tequila: mezcals, raicilla, and also sotols (not an agave but a dessert spoon distillate). When we finally made it to opening night, exhausted from the last sleepless nights of the build-out, Id been scrambling through ...Read More