Honeycut | Part Cocktail Bar, Part Disco, Downtown's Honeycut Is Feeling The Groove | Tasting Table Los Angeles

Part cocktail bar, part disco, Downtown's Honeycut is feeling the groove

If you could assemble a dream team of L.A. cocktail talent, the lineup might look like the one at Honeycut, the new basement bar and disco club hidden beneath Downtown's O Hotel.

To open the joint, the owners of The Varnish and Seven Grand partnered with Proprietors LLC, a consulting outfit run by former Death and Co. bartenders David Kaplan and Alex Day.

The collaboration didn't stop there: A rotating cast of the city's best drink slingers, including Devon Tarby and Dave Fernie, spent three months tinkering inside Proprietors' Arts District "test bar" to produce the most ambitious cocktail list ever to hit Downtown.

Here's where you can drink it: Wander down an alley off Flower and 8th Street, where you'll spot a neon sign. Take the stairs into a dim, grungy lounge with mirrored ceilings, black leather booths and a pool table. It only gets more curious from there.

Snap judgment | A pool shark's haven (Photos by Joey Maloney)

The 50-cocktail menu–populated by cult spirits, funky apertifs and oddball mixers–approaches overwhelming status. Helpfully, drinks are divided into evocative but silly categories like "Deep Thoughts," "No Regrets" and "Classy As F*ck."

Should you start off with the Snap Judgment ($13), a combination of banana-infused gin, Armagnac and Madeira, or The Lost Weekend ($13), made with apple brandy, Becherovka and an odiferous spirit known as Swedish Punsch?

Or better yet, you could boogie over to the light-up dance floor while sipping effervescent draft cocktails, such as Nobody's Robots ($11), a quenching elixir of vodka, orange-cream soda and sherry.

Honeycut is like the AM/PM of cocktail bars: Too much good stuff.