Day Trip

The first room lasted thirty-one days. It opened on Amboy Road in August 2024, across from Carrier Park, with Christian Myers’ Boy Howdy Burgers pop-up running the evening kitchen; Hurricane Helene flooded it a month later. Brandon Davis and his husband, Davie Roberts, rebuilt rather than close for good. The couple faced more than two hundred thousand dollars in loans; a GoFundMe drive, a large share of it from LGBTQ+ supporters, carried them through it. They reopened the following May at 174 Broadway, twice the size of the original, with a full cafe folded in beside the bar. Inside now: a ribbed wood-beam ceiling strung with warm bulbs over an orange-lacquered counter, a diamond mirror rimmed in marquee lights behind a strip of red neon. Past that, a red velvet booth under bamboo lattice where two people split a charcuterie board, and a room done floor to ceiling in a 1970s floral mural, brick at the seams, an owl painting over gold velvet armchairs. A shirt on the merch rail reads I Went To Daytrip And All I Did Was Sin. Six cocktails run eleven to sixteen dollars. 28 Moons of Uranus pairs Citadelle gin with velvet falernum, orgeat and passion fruit; Pink Squirrel is creme de noyaux, creme de cacao and heavy cream; Kiss My Grits mixes Four Roses bourbon with Nixta and Angostura. Take the floral room if it is free; the orange counter out front is where everyone else already is.