Kuanyu C.
Yelp
"Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune." - Thomas Fuller
Neatly tucked away under Kings Barcade is Neptunes Parlour, another one of these Speakeasy, subterranean bars. Downtown Raleigh seem to have a lot of them lately.
Besides the standard draft/bottle beer selection, undoubtedly Neptunes also carries a fine selection of well made cocktails with a focus on fresh ingredients and flavors. The drink/cocktail specials "change with the weather, using local ingredients when they're at their best in delicious, fun and affordable libations," as indicated by the proprietor. I just recently tried the "Apricot Royale," which has Pisco, lime, pecan "Orgeat", gomme syrup, egg white, apricot brandy, black walnut & Angostura bitters, brandied dried apricot.
It's funny they use "Parlour," of old French origins 'parleor,' or "to speak." It's the same thing I kept wondering about these kind of bars: If it's SPEAKEASY, why is it always so HARD to SPEAK even to the person next to you, over the DJ/live music (but 90% of time it's actually from Pandora/Spotify on one of the bartenders' iPhone/iPod?) But I digress.
Neptunes also has some pretty swag classic arcade games and pinball machine. I set the top score on Pac-man just last week!
The crowd here is... peculiar. On most nights, especially if there are live performance upstairs in Kings, you will find large crowd here before and after the show, and they will be very HIP in nature, (I wasn't allowed to use the word anymore, the word that starts with 'H' and rhymes with "Ipster.") But one Tuesday night I stopped by here with a friend, and there was no more than a handful of people sitting at the bar, a DJ spinning some pretty lively tracks, and one lone dude, breaking his dance away. Oh yea! we are talking all the all school moves: the sweep, the heli, even timed his pose perfectly at the end of "Sandstorm."