NEW ORLEANS’S CHILLEST NEW LATE-NIGHT COCKTAIL BAR IS FROM THE BACCHANAL TEAM
Twenty-two years after the founding of beloved Bywater wine bar Bacchanal, its owners have partnered with a longtime member of their team to open a low-key, late-night cocktail bar just blocks away. NightBloom, set in a small corner building at 3100 St. Claude Avenue, opened in New Orleans in April.
NightBloom is from Joaquin Rodas, Adrian Mendez, and Justin “Juice” LeClair, who worked with Rodas and Mendez at Bacchanal for a few years while also working at Bar Tonique. It’s an unpretentious, charming bar in dusty pink and muted teal with simple furnishings and grandma-chic curtains. “I really just wanted a place for adults,” LeClair tells Eater. He pitched Rodas on the bar as a Bywater resident who felt something was missing from the neighborhood: “A cool, calm, and collected cocktail bar that’s open late,” he says. “I love dives, I think they’re really important, but we wanted to do something different.”
Walk by the unmarked bar on any given evening and the dim interior dances with the light of votive candles to a soundtrack of Sade, Erykah Badu, and maybe some original mashups by a DJ. The atmosphere is instantly relaxing — a space that compels the drinker to unwind. There may even be some incense burning.
The Underneath the Purple Rain, Miss Vanjie, and Coco La Fleur cocktails.
The drinks help with that unwinding, too. LeClair builds a frequently changing menu of about eight cocktails, a mix of classics like a vesper, Negroni, or daiquiri, and original creations that start at $10 and cap out at $15. “We’re not overly bespoke,” LeClair says of the drinks.
He sources a mix of women-owned, BIPOC-owned, and single-family liquors like whiskey from Exclave Spirits, founded by New Orleans native Andrew Albert, and La Gritona, a reposado from Melly Barajas and her all-women staff at a small distillery in Valle De Guadalupe. There’s the Miss Vanjie, named after performer and RuPaul’s Drag Race competitor Vanessa Vanjie Mateo, which combines mezcal, tequila, cilantro, mint, jalapeño, pineapple, lime, agave, and salt; and the Underneath the Purple Rain with lavender-infused gin, Chareau aloe liqueur, Suze, Cocchi Americano, and a lemon twist. And of course, there’s a small selection of Bacchanal-approved wines by the glass from Ercole and a few beers.
The bar itself is striking, designed and built by local designer Matthew Holdren in sinker cypress with turquoise-painted siding and overhung with panels of glowing red light. The otherwise minimalist space is adorned with bulkhead-style light sconces, a few mirrors and pieces of art (with more to come), and plants.
It’s already hosted several bar takeovers from the likes of Erika Flowers, bar lead at Compère Lapin and one of Punch’s best bartenders of 2023, and food pop-ups like Barbekyu, Marlon Green’s Filipino Creole and barbecue kitchen, there every Friday. Customers can expect vinyl nights and guest DJ sets, mostly on the low-key side. But, LeClair says of the music, “I like to read a room. We can turn up a bit.” Every night an hour before closing he puts on “chiller” stuff like Luther Vandross or Anita Baker — “I call it landing the plane,” he says.
NightBloom is open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., seven nights a week. Check out more photos of the space below.