Shhh. A little secret is reaching my ears right while a dish of pan-seared scallops reaches my palette at Eighty8 Kitchen + Cocktails. Word is, there’s a bar down the road, just off the lobby of The Ritz-Carlton Reynolds, Lake Oconee, neatly tucked away from guests checking in and out of the hotel. It’s a speakeasy, I’m told, which means it could be hidden behind a painting, beneath a carpeted hatch, or anywhere you’d least expect to find it.
All I have is a name: Oconee Cove. Up for an adventure, I drive over to the hotel and find a man near the front desk with an earpiece and a stoic expression. For all I know, he’s the valet manager, but because I’m in a speakeasy state of mind he looks to me like a sentry.
“Can I help you?” he asks. My speakeasy state of mind goes blank. I have no idea what a wannabe patron would have said to gain access to an underground “establishment” during prohibition. No one divulged a password, so I just come clean.
“I’m looking for Oconee Cove.”
There’s a lengthy gap in the dialogue as the man studies me a bit. I’ll find out later he actually is the valet manager, but he’s also been trained to play the speakeasy routine and make visitors believe they’re about to enter an exclusive hideaway frozen in time. He puts a finger to his earpiece, mumbles something, and says, “Follow me.”
A few steps down a hallway we stop at an indiscreet sitting nook. My guard looks around and knocks some sort of Morse code on the wall, which slowly slides open just far enough for an eyeball to peer out from the other side, where I can hear faint sounds of jazz music.
“We were expecting you,” the hostess says, which is odd because I wasn’t expecting me. (Reservations are required to enter Oconee Cove and someone, it turns out, made one on my behalf.) The hostess quietly leads the way to a private table near the edge of a window, spaced apart from big parlor chairs and deep couches and across the room from a dimly lit wall where shelves, instead of holding books, are displaying a variety of high-end liquors that might be hidden out of sight at a moment’s notice.
“Make yourself comfortable,” the hostess says, welcoming me to what could very well be considered a deeper escape from the vacation escape. From my seat, where a bowl of truffle popcorn is delivered, I have a covert view of Lake Oconee through some foliage. The acoustics mute conversations into soft whispers. The drink menu includes 30-year-old scotch whiskeys, hard-to-find bourbons, rums from the Caribbean and Central America, mezcals and tequilas. It’s cozy and peaceful enough to erase every care in the world even before a glass arrives.
“How long has this been here?” I ask the mixologist, believing Oconee Cove must have existed long before I came upon it.
“It opened in the summer of 2024,” she says. “The team saw an opportunity to do something special during hotel renovations and converted the barrel room into this.”
I like to imagine she said 1924. Later, as darkness falls outside, the jazz will raise the energy in Oconee Cove. For now, early in the evening, the mood is as relaxing as the old fashioned that the mixologist has smoked at the table.
A text arrives. Answering seems … out of place. So, I power down my phone and pretend technology doesn’t yet exist. Everything is right again.
