A 1920s-themed craft cocktail bar, restaurant planned for new Barq’s building in Biloxi
A speakeasy craft cocktail bar and restaurant is the first business signed to open in the Barq’s building in downtown Biloxi.
The name and concept for the 3,333-square-foot space at 832 Howard Ave. were announced Friday during the ribbon cutting and block party for the District Green.
This outdoor venue and this new bar are the first developments revealed as The District on Howard mixed-use development begins to take shape. Plans call for bars, restaurants and retail built out in several buildings along the portion of Howard Avenue now paved in bricks. Apartments and condos on the upper floors will provide downtown living.
The leased space previously housed Wachovia Mortgage and comes with a bank vault that will be part of the suspense and mystery of the new speakeasy, said Scott Gremillion. He was a co-owner of the award-winning Olive or Twist handcrafted cocktail bar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and now will oversee the development and operation of Bilocchy.
“Bilocchy” was one of the alternative names for South Mississippi’s 1699 settlement originally known as Fort Maurepas.
With a historic building, in the historic district of downtown Biloxi, and serving cocktails with a past, this new venue needs a historic name, Gremillion said.
“We wanted to play off history,” he said, and he selected the name Bilocchy for the Prohibition-era speakeasy after pouring over old maps of the area with Jane Shambra, director of the Local History & Genealogy Department of the Biloxi Library.
Classic with a modern twist
A speakeasy evokes a vision of a bar hidden behind nondescript doors, Gremillion said. In the new Roaring ’20s that could follow the coronavirus shutdown, “We have to be more approachable than that,” he said.
So the bar and restaurant, designed by Jackson-based Wier Boerner Allin Architecture, will have a front patio, a main bar and that vault to create an atmosphere of intimacy that he said will speak to tourists and locals.
Classic cocktails like martini, Manhattan, old fashioned and gin fizzes will inspire the craft cocktails with a modern spin, Gremillion said.
They start with the classic and add fresh ingredients and new ways of mixing to “create something similar but completely different,” he said. It might even be infusing ice spears with cocktails for something quite unusual, he said.
These won’t be your the drinks your grandparents sipped. “We’d rather be known for our cocktails created by our staff in-house,” he said.
The food menu will feature modern coastal cuisine, he said, with small and shared plates created in-house to celebrate local farms and waters that gave Biloxi Barq’s root beer its distinctive taste.
Speakeasy will be different and first
“It’s going to be a lot different than what people expect or are accustomed to,” he said, an unlike anything else on the Coast.
Howard Avenue once was the vibrant downtown in Biloxi, with Barq’s, JCPenney and Woolworths sharing the street with locally-owned stores and restaurants.
Gremillion said he isn’t sure how many months it will take to transform the building into a craft cocktail bar. “I just want to get it right,” he said.
“I was looking at other places,” he said, to locate a new concept bar along the Gulf Coast and on the Florida Panhandle.
The other locations he scoped were farther along in redeveloping their downtown, he said.
Biloxi has Mardi Gras, casinos, a craft brewery and a ballpark, all centered in the downtown, and he said it’s just starting to develop its downtown with apartments and now his businesses.
“There’s always something to be said for being the first,” he said.
This story was originally published March 5, 2021 at 3:28 PM.
