The Low Down

Before it was The Low Down, the room below 723 Haywood Road was The Black Cloud, a metal bar strung with blacklights. Casey Campfield, who opened The Crow & Quill downtown in 2014, gutted the space in October 2023 and rebuilt it in red oak and Baltic birch around a canopy-style bar modeled on an English pub. An eye tops the arrow sign at the door, spelling THE LOW DOWN down three lit teardrops at the foot of the stairwell off Haywood Road; inside, a second eye is cut into the wall as a mirror, flanked by hand-shaped sconces and geometric fretwork panels across from the leather booths. J-Krush of Shapesmith Studio cut the fretwork and Tom Gibson of Ironwood Studios built the woodwork; Story Blowers did the signage. Stemware hangs upside down over the bar next to gold shakers and bar tools. Four booths and stools at the bar seat about forty; a shuffleboard table takes up the rest of the floor. Two of the bartenders are twenty years into the cocktail industry apiece; a third has logged several years elsewhere in the city’s bars. The list swings from savory to floral: the Blue Ghost, a martini made with blue-cheese-and-olive-oil-washed gin, thirteen dollars; A Cure for Shyness, pisco with crème de violette, elderflower and thyme; the Cloud 9 Negroni, barrel-aged with fino sherry, at eighteen dollars, the top of the menu’s range. Go for a seat at the bar if you want to watch the canopy fill in before the shuffleboard does.