Cocktail bar Whoopsie’s is ready to pour in Reynoldstown.
Located at 1 Moreland Ave. in the former Hodgepodge Coffee space in Reynoldstown, Whoopsie’s is the creation of Tim Faulkner and Hudson Rouse, who met while working at Octopus Bar in East Atlanta.
Faulkner went on to help owners Nhan Le and the late Angus Brown open the now-shuttered Lusca in Brookwood Hills and 8Arm in Poncey-Highland, while Rouse opened his own restaurant, Rising Son, in Avondale Estates.
The drink menu will be overseen by Faulkner, who also operated Up & Down, a cocktail pop-up that operated out of the now-closed Gato in Candler Park.
Credit: Courtesy of Whoopsie's
Credit: Courtesy of Whoopsie's
He said he’s most excited about making classics like amaretto sours and tuxedos. He’s also playing with recipes from 1970s Playboy etiquette books, including the Playboy Cooler, made with Jamaican rum, pineapple juice, lemon juice, coffee liqueur and Coca-Cola (”It reads like trash, but it tastes really good,” he says).
“We’re saying that we’re not doing classic cocktails, we’re doing classy cocktails,” he says.
The beverage offerings also include a selection of natural wines and a handful of beers.
Developed by Rouse, the food menu is designed for people “who are drinking and they think to themselves, ‘I should probably eat something,’ and then they look at the menu, and it looks that good where they say, ‘Yeah, I should probably eat something.’”
A raw section offers items like a satsuma salad with romaine, avocado, satsuma, shallots, cilantro and champagne vin. A throwback snack tray will offer a rotating selection of snacks served with bread slices; a recent iteration included deviled eggs, pimento cheese, pickles and Spanish olives.
Vegetarian options include a Hasselback sweet potato served with hummus, labneh, pickled ramp, zaatar, sumac and parsley and roasted carrots with mint, Decimal Place Farms feta and almonds.
A different protein will be offered each night, with crispy chicken thighs done in a Provence style with lemon butter and herbs on Mondays, porchetta with salsa verde on Thursdays and prime rib on Fridays and Saturdays. Sundays will be seafood night, with poached sea bass with a Pakistani pickled lime condiment currently on the menu.
A rotating sandwich of the day will usually utilize leftovers from the protein served the previous night.
For the dessert at Whoopsie’s, Rouse is digging into his granny’s cookbook for sweets she served him when he was a kid.
Credit: Courtesy of Whoopsie's
Credit: Courtesy of Whoopsie's
“She was known for clipping recipes from catalogs and newspapers and changing the names,” he said, including a dish she called Tarzan’s Delight, “that’s basically a chocolate custard icebox pie” and a buttermilk custard pie.
Rouse is sourcing locally as much as possible, including getting produce from farms including Levity Farms and Furrowed Earth Farms and meats from Riverview Farms and Stone Mountain Cattle. He also plans to grow his own produce to use in dishes at both Rising Son and Whoopsie’s.
Hudson and Rouse plan to have local pop-ups operate in the restaurant on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when Whoopsie’s is closed.
The intimate space seats about 40 guests, including booths, tables and one table behind a curtain to give larger parties more privacy. The spacious bar, complete with leather bumper, offers six seats with room for two people to stand.
Credit: Courtesy of Whoopsie's
Credit: Courtesy of Whoopsie's
“At night, it feels like you’re at the bottom of the ocean,” Faulkner said, likening it to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance theme in the film “Back to the Future.” Large windows opening onto Moreland Avenue “create a fishbowl effect,” he said. “It’s cozy as hell.”
The space also features lots of greenery, an Impressionist-style mural behind the bar of a “hazy party scene” and a 6x4 portrait of the last grand madam of San Francisco.
Whoopsie’s opening hours are 5 p.m.-midnight Thursdays-Mondays.
1 Moreland Ave., Atlanta. instagram.com/whooopsies_place.
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