Beneath a popular DCL restaurant, a bar that spent decades in storage has been brought back to life and named for the woman who made Will O’ the Wisp feel like home.
There’s a door at Deep Creek Lake you won’t find unless you know to look for it. There’s no sign out front. The only clue is on a website, tucked into the bottom-left corner of a video: the faintest letter E, flickering like a candle that’s about to go out. Hover over it, and you’re in.
Well, almost. You still have to make a reservation and get through a bit of a tricky door.
The secret is Evelyn’s Speakeasy and Cocktail Lounge, and it sits downstairs at Ace’s Run, on the former Will O’ the Wisp property.
I went looking for that door on a recent afternoon with a camera and a microphone, which might be the least speakeasy way to arrive anywhere. About thirty seconds into our interview, my guest asked if we could start over. Fair enough. It isn’t every day you’re asked to give away a secret on the record.
“It’s the big secret that’s out,” laughed Jeany Blamble, who manages the space.
To understand the room, you have to know the woman it’s named for. “If you know anything about the history of Deep Creek Lake,” Jeany said, “Evelyn was Ace Heise’s wife.
While Helmuth “Ace” Heise was busy building the Wisp Ski Resort on Marsh Mountain, Evelyn and their son, Martin, were running Will O’ the Wisp and its Four Seasons dining room.
“They were very much into hospitality,” Jeany said. “Really making everyone feel at home and welcome in their
restaurant, encouraging people to chat and stick around and have a good time. And that’s what we want this space to feel like, too.”
The room itself was the property’s original bar, dating all the way back to 1953.
It was only used for a short time, probably less than a year, before a banquet hall and a dining room upstairs opened. Then it became de facto storage for a very, very long time.
Not that it was ever truly hidden.
“Everyone knew there was a bar down here,” Jeany said. “A lot of people’s parents got married here. Their grandparents got married here.” This bar was just buried under decades of decorations and spare furniture.
That changed this spring, when a group of local women planning a Kentucky Derby benefit for Garrett Regional Medical Center hospital asked whether they could use the old bar. “So we’re like, yeah, let’s unearth it!” Jeany said.
The team gave it a coat of paint, or two, and the volunteers went treasure hunting across the property. Every chair, every lamp and every lampshade in the room today was already somewhere on the grounds. “I painted in here on a Thursday, and I said, ‘I’ll be back Saturday morning,’” Jeany said. “I came back Saturday morning and it was all set up. And I was like, ‘This is the best ever.’”
The Derby party came and went, but nobody wanted to pack the room back up. When the team floated the idea of a full-time speakeasy, building owner and restaurateur Brenda McDonnell’s first reaction was, “Are you crazy?”
Jeany wasn’t sure whether they were or not. Then Brenda said, “Let’s do it.” Evelyn’s started welcoming guests around the Fourth of July.
Today the walls are a deep, moody red, and the room holds 18 or 20 people at most, at tables for two and four. That’s on purpose.
“There’s really no place else in Deep Creek you could go on a Friday night and sit and have a conversation at a normal level,” Jeany said, “without people hovering over you trying to get a drink.”
Time moves differently down there.
“You’re here at five, having a drink, then you go to leave and it’s still daylight,” she said. “You don’t know what’s happening outside the walls.”
Now, a confession. I’m not much of a drinker, which made me either the worst or the best person for this assignment. Luckily, the menu is built for curious people.
The signature cocktail is, of course, the Evelyn: a lychee martini with just a hint of lychee. “Because a lady never reveals
her secrets,” Jeany said. “It’s elegant, crisp and deceptively simple.” Her other favorite is the Smoke and Mirrors, which she describes as “a Manhattan and an old fashioned had a baby.”
There’s also a late-night list of classics: the Last Word, the Boulevardier and the Paper Plane. Jeany calls them the mother cocktails, the foundations bartenders build everything else from. Order the Paper Plane, by the way. Most bars garnish it with a tiny paper airplane but, at Evelyn’s, the airplane is folded from a million-dollar bill.
The food stays small and simple: house-made salt-and-vinegar chips, marinated olives and a jar of cherries that are actually cherries, soaked in sugar and natural cherry juice. She said many people ask for extra cherries and I definitely did, too.
One of my favorite details is the rotating cast behind the bar. On any given night, it could be someone from Ace’s Run, someone from Firewater, or Jeany herself. “You never know who’s in here,” she said. “But the drinks are always going to be the same.” If you don’t know what to order, she says, please ask. The bartenders will gladly steer you toward something you’ll love, or make it from scratch.
The room has already found plenty of uses its builders never imagined. Its very first event was a bachelor party that was supposed to happen on the dock, until it started pouring down the rain. Eighteen guys came downstairs instead, for a whiskey tasting and a few cocktails before dinner. A local homeowners association has held its social hour there after a meeting next door. And Evelyn’s now books private cocktail classes and tastings, too.
Out back, the patio Ace’s Run renovated this spring, with its stone fireplace, gives the whole lower level a little more room to breathe.
So what’s the password to enter this cozy, hidden hideout? There isn’t one, at least not yet. “We’re still working on the door,” Jeany laughed.
Find the flickering E on the Ace’s Run website (or go straight to acesrun.com/evelyns) and request a reservation. Someone will call the afternoon of your reservation to confirm. When you arrive, check in at the Ace’s Run host stand, and you’ll be escorted down; there is no secret knock required.
Just don’t wait until the last minute. Reservations open only 30 days ahead, and with so few seats, Thursday through Saturday only, they fill fast. If you have a December date in mind, mark your calendar for November and be ready.
Before you leave, look up. Above one of the exit doors is an original stained-glass panel that reads “The Sitzmark.” Guests ask about it all the time. A sitzmark is the dent a skier leaves after a tumble in the snow, and on the banquet room door nearby, a tiny stained-glass skier is caught mid-fall, his legs making a little V.
Jeany thinks it was the Heises’ quiet way of tying their two Garrett County worlds together. Ace left his mark on the mountain and, Evelyn, it turns out, left hers right here. You just have to know where to look.
For private events, cocktail classes and tastings, email whisper@evelynsdcl.com.