Some bars try to transport you. Platform 18 in Phoenix, Arizona—already a kind of hallucinatory train car masquerading as a cocktail bar—wants to take you somewhere deeper, stranger, more total. Somewhere around 1920s Harlem by way of a hall of mirrors. And with its new cocktail menu, “Midnight in Harlem,” it just might.
This is the latest immersive conjuring from Barter & Shake (the creative minds behind Sunny’s Lounge, UnderTow, Grey Hen Rx), all nested inside the larger Century Grand bar complex. But Platform 18 is its own fever dream: imagine a subterranean jazz record, scratched but in a good way, looping forever under a low violet light.
The new menu is a kind of novella in five chapters: Quick Picks, At The Station, Unlikely Syndicate, Dinner & Dancing, and After Dinner. In a move that feels as intimate as reading someone else’s marginalia, each drink is attributed to the individual bartender who birthed it into existence.
The At The Station section sets the tone. Take “Show Me The Set Ups,” a drink with ‘smuggled spirits’ (one imagines a small batch moonshine smuggled under a jazz singer’s fur coat), plus makrut lime, ginger, red mango, and yuzu—a sour-ginger dreamscape humming at the edge of prohibition.
But Unlikely Syndicate is where the bar flexes its surrealist muscle. “The Film Star” (try to read this without hearing a muted trumpet somewhere in the background) is a madcap blend of olive oil–washed Sweet Gwendoline Gin, Grey Goose Vodka, lemon-infused Kina Lillet, and an orange-thyme caramel corn flourish that sounds like a private screening you weren’t supposed to hear about. Or “West Side Cowboy,” a prairie dream gone sideways, starring Garrison Brothers Bourbon, pecan honey, grapefruit, and honey-roasted pecans.
By Dinner & Dancing, you’re in the middle of the room, sweaty and delighted. Here’s “Call Her Marguerite,” a drink starring ‘pineapple-jacked’ Ana Maria Tequila, Suze Gentian, cacao nib agave nectar, and guajillo—finished with a literal chocolate feather, because why the hell not.
Finally, After Dinner offers “Coffee Con Cubano,” a nightcap that feels like an after-hours jazz set: Café Bustelo Wheatley Vodka, Clément Créole Shrubb, pu’erh tea–infused rum, tobacco bitters, cold brew, orange oil, and a chocolate cigarette.
If your mouth is still intact after that odyssey, you can even order booze-laced ice creams like the “Wicked City,” laced with mezcal, green Chartreuse, Dutch cocoa, and Fernet-lime fudge. Lobster toast anchors the small bites menu, with a caviar service looming on the horizon—one more flourish in this surging improvisation.
Platform 18’s “Midnight in Harlem” isn’t just a cocktail list; it’s a ragtime hallucination, a vibrating love letter to an era that was always half dream anyway. If you’re anywhere near Phoenix, you might want to jump a phantom train and catch this one before it steams into the ether.
More information head over to Platform 18’s official website.
