Two James Spirits

We ended up here almost by accident, which turns out to be the right way to end up at Two James. Friends were in town, one of them grew up in Ferndale and had never seen the redone Michigan Central Station, so we walked the building, then walked a few blocks through the park and landed in the tasting room on a Monday afternoon.

It’s one big room built around a circular bar with a great concrete top, with bench seating and a few tables along one wall. We had a teenager with us, so we took a table. The music had a Cuban-café thing going and ran a little loud, though not so loud that we were shouting at each other or accidentally following the next table’s conversation. Bathrooms clean, staff genuinely lovely — our bartender was so enthusiastic about the rums and gins that we sampled our way through a stack of them. We drank a Gimlet, a Pretty in Pink, and a Detroit Cooler, and would have kept going with more hours in the day.

A few spirits were out that afternoon, which barely registered given everything else on offer. There’s no food beyond bags of Better Made, so we walked over to Ima Izakaya for dinner afterward. We’ll be back when we’ve got the whole evening — the menu is long enough that a Monday drop-in doesn’t come close.