How a mortuary-themed dive bar became Little Donna’s unofficial waiting room

A friendship between a mortuary-themed bar and a New York Times-loved restaurant sounds like the beginning of a joke. But the symbiotic relationship between Spirits Tavern and Little Donna’s is no laughing matter.

With the rise in popularity of Little Donna’s, Robbie Tutlewski’s restaurant in Upper Fells Point, the spooky-themed Spirits corner bar one block away saw the opportunity to shift its own beverage offerings and business model to accommodate patrons waiting for a table at the buzzy eatery.

“The bar at Little Donna’s is not that big,” Jonathan Bozart, Spirits’ general manager, said of the lauded Midwestern chef’s restaurant. “They’ve been getting slammed and people are constantly waiting for tables, and since we’re down the street, they send people down here until they call them and tell them their table is ready.”

The relationship has been good for both Bank Street businesses, which operate out of rowhomes and manage their customers from a smaller footprint.

“If people are spending money, I’d rather them do it here,” said Tutlewski, who opened his critically acclaimed restaurant in 2022. “But I’m glad they’re getting in on the action.” For Little Donna’s, whose bar seats six, Spirits has become the de facto waiting area for walk-in customers who want a drink before dinner.

Now the small team of four at Spirits — which includes owner Ryan Woodland, bartender Dave Dart and lead bartender Meredith Page, who is Bozart’s wife — has adapted to welcome the new crowd, raking in more liquor sales with monthly cocktail specials. The bar doesn’t have a traditional drink menu.

“We were not really a cocktail bar,” Bozart said. “We were an ‘and’ bar, like rum and coke, gin and tonic.”

Before the Little Donna’s crowd came into the picture, Spirits was best known for its free-play pool table and metal music; its largest ad campaign each year is during Maryland Deathfest.

The soul of the dive bar hasn’t changed. It continues to attract a diverse crowd with a wide age range, including Johns Hopkins University students as well as the “old guards in the neighborhood” who come for the rotating draft beers, Bozart said. But liquor orders have become more “upscale,” as Spirits constantly makes adjustments to the ingredients it purchases.

“We’re serving up more martinis than we ever did, that’s for sure,” Bozart said. “And we go through a lot of olive juice. People like them dirty.”

Bozart offers a 10% discount to Little Donna’s customers, who he says stand out from the regulars at his 1901 Bank St. tavern, which was built in 1890 and renamed in 2005 to pay homage to the days it served as a funeral home.

“Usually you can tell because they’re dressed a little nicer than our patrons,” said Bozart, who enjoys chatting up visitors to share his menu recommendations on what to eat for dinner at the 1812 Bank St. restaurant. “Maybe suggest the lobster pierogies or a cocktail if they’ve never been before.”

The Little Donna’s staff loves them, too; Tutlewski rents out Spirits every year to host his staff’s holiday party. “They’re good people, unlike others that I won’t name that don’t patronize my establishment,” he said of Spirits’ friendliness compared to other, more “introvert” businesses in the area.

On a recent visit, slightly dressed-up diners fresh off their meal at Little Donna’s slid into seats at Spirits next to more casual beer-drinking regulars, who had taken a break from shooting pool.

“Heat me up a dog,” a Spirits Tavern regular yelled across the bar — an order off the chalkboard food menu. In the meantime, bartender Dart asked which brand of vodka one Little Donna’s diner wanted for their drink order, and asked another how to make a Pimm’s cup, as he couldn’t quite remember.