One of the Best Cocktail Bars in the U.S. Just Opened a Stunning Hotel in Savannah

When the 48-seat Death & Co. opened in Manhattan’s East Village in 2006, it helped put the idea of “craft cocktails” on the map. Even in the early days, when the bartenders first mixed now-infamous recipes like the Oaxacan Old-Fashioned, it was clear to founder David Kaplan that “we’d captured lightning in a bottle.” 

Nineteen years later, Death & Co. has four bars in the U.S. and has published three coffee-table books. As of July, they’ve added to the list Municipal Grand, a 44-room hotel in Savannah’s North Historic District. Kaplan and his two business partners imbued the property with the same “cocktail-focused hospitality” that made their initial bar a success. “Our bar is small and intimate—a refuge, just like our hotel,” Kaplan says. “Municipal Grand’s rooms are designed to feel comfortable, personal, and layered with subtle nods to cocktail culture.”

Guest rooms have built-in banquettes for morning coffee or evening cocktails and custom armoires stocked with spirits, glassware, and bar tools. “It’s our way of inviting guests to engage with the ritual of cocktail-making,” Kaplan says.

The six-story former bank building has been redesigned by Canadian architecture firm AAmp Studio with creative input from the Death & Co. team. It’s centrally located at the corner of Abercorn and Broughton streets, next to two historic cinemas, where the annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival is held. “If you walk in off Broughton, you step directly into Municipal Bar,” Kaplan adds.

At the Municipal Bar restaurant (which also serves all-day brunch), he recommends kicking off with oysters and steak tartare—“perfect companions for martini service at the table,” Kaplan says. After a dinner of croquettes with mortadella and tomato, sourdough gnocchi, and porchetta with ’nduja ragù, you might end the night with Daiquiri Cheekies: three tiny daiquiris in flavors like pineapple and strawberry. 

There is also a rooftop hangout, Sun Club, where guests can post up on loungers and order cocktails and light bites. And this fall, the hotel will debut a tucked-away subterranean bar called Hot Eye. “Off the back of the building, there’s a little laneway—they don’t call them alleys in Savannah—with direct access to Hot Eye,” Kaplan says. “It’s meant to feel like a neighborhood bar—fun, dark, moody, playful—built for Savannah, but discoverable for our guests.”

A version of this story first appeared in the September 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “On the House.”