This downtown bar is a “tropical hellscape” of food and drinks

Restaurants and bars open at an incredible rate in New York City, reception ranging on a scale from “okay?” to “wowie zowie.” Will the public be moved by yet another boîte billed as a love letter to something or other that turns out to be affection for profit alone? Actually, sometimes yes. But folks really take notice when a place premieres with some pomp, pageantry and pizzazz.  

Paradise Lost, which opens Friday, October 13 in the East Village, is billed in a press release as “a campy, transportive experience that takes guests to a tropical “hellscape,”” with a space that “elicits a sinister escapism.”  

But wait, there's more—including an invented backstory that somewhat borrows from Milton’s epic poem by the same name, like a fable that the bar “exists in a cosmic plane known as "The Abyss”.” Where Milton’s Abyss was, of course, famously visited by Satan, this one’s “inhabited with unique characters,” with drinks and design elements intended to engage guests with this fiction. 

Some of those narrative-pushing fixtures number an eight-foot altar, oversized bat taxidermy (head only), a white fur interior door and snakeskin banquettes. There is also a lighting arrangement that changes when you order select cocktails. 

Photograph: Courtesy of Noah Fecks

Takes on “tiki-inspired and tropical” tipples are ominously monikered, like the archfiend, (jalapeño-infused tequila, makrut leaf-infused mezcal, galangal agave syrup, lime cordial, hibiscus syrup, hellfire bitters), the classic and threateningly-termed cobra’s fang (blend of rums, Fassionola syrup, lime, orange, absinthe) and the piña colada-like Beelz's road soda, which sure sounds like it’s named for Beelzebub, who, in Milton’s Paradise, is not one with Satan, but rather, just a friend. 

Snacks include topically titled mezu musubi, damned dumplings and somewhat less excitingly labeled sticky ribs, but I guess you can imagine they’re from devils or something. 

The menu further incorporates surf imagery, and a proprietors’ note that reads, in part, “We would like to acknowledge the legacy of tiki is one built on cultural appropriation and erasure and would like to state firmly that we are dedicated to creating a new experience built upon respect for all cultures and peoples.”

Paradise Lost at 100 2nd Avenue will be open daily from 5pm-2am beginning Friday, October 13.