Baltimore’s once-secret, Fridays-only bar is entering its mainstream era

For its first few years in operation, Vision House felt like a secret.

The Charles Village bar, only open once a week on Fridays, was initially just a place for those who knew owners Aleks Mihailovic and Meg Snyder to grab a drink, maybe play chess and hang out.

The lore around town was that the place with the cool vibes was for hospitality industry workers and artists. If you knew, you knew.

But now, the vision is expanding.

The bar, which opened in February 2023, has built up its team and last month started opening on Mondays, too. Vision House hopes to eventually add more weekdays and programming once their entertainment license comes through.

Mihailovic, who lives in the unit above the 136 W. 25th St. property, wasn’t even sure she wanted to own a bar. A Croatian native who’s been in Baltimore since 2012, she mostly wanted a place where she could host friends and support artists. The space was formerly home to dive bar the Rendezvous Lounge.

“We really liked the space,” Mihailovic said. “It came with the liquor license, so we’re like, ‘I guess we’re opening a bar. I guess that’s what it’s going to be.’”

Snyder became the de facto lead bartender, with help from Mihailovic’s ever-expanding network of friends, including bartender and longtime pal Matt Creedon. Creedon came down from New York and taught Snyder cocktail recipes, like the bar’s signature nonalcoholic drink, The Boss — a base of muddled demerara sugar and lime juice mixed with bitters and club soda. To make it a Dirty Boss, white rum is added.

The bar was initially secretive. The team used to have a group chat where they would text people when they were open. Strangers who wanted to visit Vision House had to look for codes on social media and enter them into a keypad outside the bar to get in.

“They’d post a code on Instagram and you had to find it,” said John Anane-Sefah, the newest co-owner of Vision House, and himself one of the patrons who found a code and showed up one night to pitch his food services to the team.

Anane-Sefah moved to Baltimore in 2018, and operated a pop-up, Asanka, featuring West African food. With the limited space at Vision House, he decided that gourmet hot dogs would best for the crowd, selling them under his new moniker, Mr. Roast Beast. But customers will see a sprinkling of his former food in the rotation from time to time, including his signature gumbo.

Long gone are the code days, partially because the keypad broke “and we never replaced it,” Mihailovic said.

They also never replaced the built-in hacienda-like infrastructure behind the bar — a remnant from when the space was a Greek restaurant — with its faux arches and balconies that make Vision House’s interior feel like an outdoor courtyard. The layout of the West 25th Street spot consists of three main areas: the main long bar with seating, the outdoor patio, and the back chess room, which is permanently set up with boards, thanks to a partnership with Charles Village Chess Club.

With craft cocktails including a whiskey sour with house-made mix, bourbon old fashioned and the Prohibition-era bee’s knees drink, all currently $10, Vision House feels like an escape from the escalating prices at bars, where drinks tend to be more expensive.

There are also personal touches throughout the menu, like a $12 garden fundraising cocktail that features a mulberry mint syrup Mihailovic makes using ingredients from the community garden where she volunteers in her free time.

The owners aren’t concerned about the bar’s growing appeal, believing the magic will remain.

“I like the renegade aspect of things that was happening here,” Anane-Sefah said. “I like seeing people’s minds kind of go crazy, like, how can we make this thing cool with a little money and no structure, really?”