Imbibe 75 Place to Watch: Paradise Lost

Story: Robert Simonson

Photo: Photos by Noah Fecks

February 28, 2024

Paradise Lost hallway — The lush and dramatic entrance to Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost interior Imbibe 75 — The tropical East Village bar trades South Seas cliches for influences from demonology, the occult, and roadside Americana.

bar booths — “The bar is the neutral zone between the earthly realm and eternal realm.” —Kavé Pourzanjani

Chaos Magick cocktail — Chaos Magick is a mix of rums, alpine liqueurs, coffee, pineapple, and Ras el Hanout.

Paradise Lost food Imbibe 75 — The food offerings include a range of bites such as chicken gyoza, musubi, spicy tater tots, and coconut shrimp skewers.

Paradise Lost Veggie Chips — Veggie chips coated with wasabi tikka masala.

Cocktail Lounge — This unique lounge is a classic third place.

When Kavé Pourzanjani and Ray Sakover were both working at the Manhattan bar The Polynesian, pre-pandemic, they began talking about opening their own tropical bar. But they wanted to avoid the usual South Seas cliches and imagery that have made tiki a controversial topic in recent years. They needed a new theme. Their counterintuitive alternative? Demonology, the occult, and “otherized gods from other cultures.” Additional influences on the design-heavy bar christened Paradise Lost were roadside America, B movies, and DC comics.

The lengthy drinks list is a mix of classic tropical cocktails and signature drinks with names like Beelz’ Road Soda and Damnboo—several of them appropriately lit on fire. There are also rum flights and a Ti’ Punch service where the bottle of rhum agricole is left with you.

The overall tone is set at the East Village bar’s dramatic entrance, which takes you down a verdant passage to a midcentury, Holiday Inn–like neon sign, and a door with a snake-shaped handle. “The front door is the portal into the abyss,” says Pourzanjani. “The bar is the neutral zone between the earthly realm and eternal realm.” Which is just another way of saying it is a classic third place.

Robert Simonson

Robert Simonson writes about bars, bartenders, cocktails, spirits and travel for The New York Times, where he has been a contributor since 2000 and the paper's primary cocktail writer since 2009. He also writes regularly for Imbibe, New York magazine, Vinepair, Esquire and other publications. His books include The Old-Fashioned: The World's First Classic Cocktail (2014); A Proper Drink (2016), the first history of the cocktail renaissance; 3-Ingredient Cocktails (2017), which was nominated for a 2018 James Beard Award; The Martini Cocktail (2019), which was nominated for a 2020 James Beard Award and won a Spirited Award; Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails (2021), which won a 2022 IACP Award; Modern Classic Cocktails (2022); and, most recently, The Encyclopedia of Cocktails (2023). His writing has been nominated for more than a dozen Spirited Awards and four IACP Awards. He was the recipient of the 2019 Spirited Award for Best Cocktail and Spirits Writer; and the 2021 IACP Award for Narrative Beverage Writing Without Recipes. He is the co-author, with Martini Doudoroff, of two apps, "Modern Classics of the Cocktail Renaissance" and "The Martini Cocktail." He is also the author of the Substack newsletter "The Mix With Robert Simonson." A native of Wisconsin, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife Mary Kate.