The Best Places to Drink and Do in Downtown & East Necklace

Standby is a cocktail bar you reach by ducking down the Belt Alley and heaving open a pair of ponderous doors, which makes ordering a martini feel like a minor heist. The menu sorts drinks by mood, from "Purist" to "Certified Bangers," so nobody has to explain themselves to a bartender. Matty Matheson of The Bear built the food menu. It's dim, polished, and worth a Resy booking.

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Chenin is a tiny wine bar tucked inside The Siren Hotel, pouring natural and biodynamic bottles to a room lit softly enough to forgive anyone's skin-contact experiments. Salty snacks and a mortadella sandwich piled onto focaccia keep the evening going longer than planned. Seats are scarce, so arrive when the doors open. It was a James Beard Award nominee for Best New Bar.

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Evening Bar is a hotel cocktail bar tucked off Parker's Alley, and you find the door by looking for the one with eyes painted on it, which feels like being watched by your own bad decisions. Inside it's small and amber-lit, with a short menu of cocktails, beer, and wine, plus a bell-pepper tequila drink and a few zero-proof options. Food & Wine put it on a 2025 list of the top hotel bars in the US.

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2. Eater Downtown Detroit’s Best Places to Eat and Drink

SPKRBOX is a downtown Detroit coffee shop that answered the question "what if this also served negronis" and kept going. The second-floor seats overlook the street, the espresso drinks get fancy, and the cocktails come with coffee syrup in them. The basement is a soundproofed, futuristic lounge called the Orange Room, so the 3 p.m. latte and the 11 p.m. second wind both have somewhere to go.

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The Royce is a wine bar and bottle shop near Grand Circus Park, where walnut shelving, globe lights, and library ladders make buying a bottle feel faintly like checking out a book. A 12-seat bar anchors the first floor, with cured meats and cheeses to keep the pours company. Over 300 bottles are for sale, plenty by the glass, and classes are on offer for anyone who'd rather understand the list than guess at it.

1. Eater Detroit’s Best Bars
2. Eater Downtown Detroit’s Best Places to Eat and Drink

The Skip is a cocktail bar in the Belt alleyway, where the walls open up in summer and the frozen drinks come out to meet the breeze. Winter closes the patio and swaps in tiki-style cocktails and holiday specials built on nostalgia. Matty Matheson designed the menu, though anyone wanting a proper sit-down meal gets pointed to the bigger sibling, Standby, a few feet away. Expect downtown energy and a festival mood in any season.

1. Eater Detroit’s Best Bars
2. Eater Downtown Detroit’s Best Places to Eat and Drink

1. Eater Detroit’s Best Hidden Bars and Speakeasies

Shelby is a basement cocktail bar in the Financial District, where finding the door is the first round of the evening. Downstairs, the drinks run from a proper espresso martini to a pineapple Averna negroni riff, backed by shared plates like beef tartare and a mushroom dish that politely impersonates escargot. It was a James Beard semifinalist for outstanding bar program. Book on Resy so you only get lost once.

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Side Hustle Lounge is a cocktail bar tucked into the Belt Alley, next door to its partner restaurant Mootz Pizza, and it skips the 1920s speakeasy costume for midcentury modern with a retro Vegas streak. The drinks run bright, sometimes electric, with a Detroit lean, like the Detroit Sour's red wine float. Pizza from Mootz arrives alongside, so it's grandpa's basement, if grandpa had a much better bar.

1. Eater Detroit’s Best Hidden Bars and Speakeasies