‘Book a room’ at Tacoma’s revamped gin-loving cocktail bar ... if you can find the door

When Gilman House closed last year, replaced by The Powder Room Champagne Bar , owners Jason and Robyn Alexander promised it would return. Where, exactly, was known but unknown — clear, if you knew where to look, but otherwise steeped in an appropriate sense of mystery.

I would not call it a speakeasy, as the term has grown fraught (does a speakeasy need a front business?), but the smaller, more intimate and, yes, clandestine Room 428 that opened in June in Tacoma’s Stadium District takes some chapters from that book.

For starters, I won’t tell you exactly where to find the entrance, but the address — 8 N. Tacoma Ave. — is not so mysterious. My hint: take stock of the details, both to find the door and once you’re let inside. The exit, as you’ll discover, is elsewhere.

The Alexanders, also behind local tiki sensation, Devil’s Reef , are masters of creating a place, one that tells a story in every nook and well-placed cranny.

There’s a rotary phone (contemporary, hooked into a system that will connect you on the “alley” side of the door to your “room” reservation on the other), antique flashes of weighty gold-framed mirrors juxtaposed with dark green walls and velvet curtains paired with lace. Jason, who worked as a carpenter before diving into the bar world in the late 2000s, built just about everything in here, including the separate front room that feels like its own little saloon. Nestle into one of several alcoves, the benches adorned with fuzzy faux pelts and lots of pillows, or the bar, which a friend helped construct to look like the deck of a boat.

Expect “a dark, shadow-filled experience with no windows and no doors and maybe you’ll escape and maybe you won’t,” as Alexander described Room 428, which, like Devil’s Reef, is themed after the H.P. Lovecraft story , “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.”

ROOM 428 COCKTAILS & ROOM SERVICE

Like its predecessor, which opened amid 2020 tumult and unexpectedly attracted more brunch-goers than cocktail dwellers, the new bar focuses on gin, employing some of the same recipes but also a slew of new ones.

The Serranian Sling, for instance, a sippable crushed-ice number of cassis, bitters, lime, spices and soda, made the journey next door, as did the Memento Mori, a strong blend of Navy Strength gin (57% alcohol by volume!) and two other drys, absinthe, juice and “hasty” fassionola, a tiki-favorite syrup that evokes the cartoon surfer flavors of Hawaiian fruit punch. It’s dangerously crushable. You’ve been warned!

A new crop of cocktails brings us on-brand names like “Descension of Pelagic Retribution at the Threshold of the Shambler” (juice, gin, curacao) and “Left to Wail in Confusion and Despair Upon the Bosom of a Vacant Sea” (absinthe, juniper, maraschino, orgeat, lime). Each drink is explained by ingredients — recognizable to most, I reckon — and their essence, as in “smooth almond” or “rich baking spices.” The menu also lists the presentation style, so you’ll know if you’re ordering a drink that’s up or over a big rock or in a tall glass with the crushiest of crushed ice.

From the galley, led by Robyn Alexander and Sara Bailly, Room 428 has found a niche in foods well-suited to the “room service” moniker, inconspicuous partners to the liquid stars.

A first visit offered from-scratch focaccia served in its mini cast-iron skillet, sliced into triangles to dip into a bowl of olive oil and balsamic. Soft deviled eggs, $8 for six halves with an appropriate sprinkle of chopped chives and finishing salt, are impossible to pass up. We grazed on the roasted veggie platter — firm red peppers and cucumber, flexible strips of herbed squash and carrots, chunks of little potatoes, warm and fluffy pita — and polished off the whipped feta.

Some plates lean into that shareable sphere, but dishes such as the salade Nicoise (butter lettuce, haricots vert, little potatoes, butter beans, olives and marcona almonds in tarragon vinaigrette) and roasted portobello-plus-other-veg burger fulfill more substantial needs.

In a nod to brunch favorites of the original Gilman House , look for sweet treats in the form of shortcakes, pudding pots and affogato.

Jason and Robyn have now been operating bars in Tacoma for almost 15 years, dating back to 2009 with The Villa Caffe and Imbibery (the address now home to Villaggio Apartments). Tacoma Cabana was their first tiki venture, replaced by their follow-up with The Fern Room in what is now West 122 . Devil’s Reef debuted in 2018.

With the reworked Gilman House, said Jason, “We didn’t really have any plan for what it was gonna be.”

Presuming you can find your way into the “hotel,” you’ll likely notice the stairwell. It’s not readily available to the imbibing public — Robyn has, however, begun hosting art classes upstairs — but it sure adds to the mystique.

GILMAN HOUSE ROOM 428

▪ 8 N. Tacoma Ave., Tacoma, instagram.com/gilmanhouseroom428

▪ Wednesday-Thursday 5-10ish p.m., Friday-Saturday 5 p.m.-midnight

▪ Details : reworked gin-focused cocktail bar from Devil’s Reef owners

▪ Reservations : recommended via Tock — exploretock.com/room-428-tacoma ($25 per-person deposit goes toward your bill) — but walk-ins welcome

Reporter’s Note : Room 428 is closed this week for the Fourth of July. It will reopen with standard hours as of July 10.