The entrance is a bagel shop. Walk into Sesame, a bakery on the ground floor of Hyde Park Village, past the register and toward the restroom, and there’s a black door most people walk right by. Say “Open Sesame,” and it opens into Jekyll — a full cocktail lounge sharing a building with, and functionally hidden inside, the place selling everyone else their morning bagel.
Three Oaks Hospitality opened Jekyll at the end of October 2023, leaning into a literary, faintly gothic theme that matches the Robert Louis Stevenson reference in the name. Cocktails are built and served with theater — drinks arriving in etched beakers and vintage glassware, some brewed and smoked tableside — and several are built around specific books or authors, including a drink inspired by Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and a rum-and-tropical-fruit cocktail called Virtue’s Vice. The room itself is dim, velvet-heavy, and small, which is part of the point — this isn’t a bar built to hold a crowd, it’s built to feel like you found something.
It’s not the only speakeasy-style bar in the area, but the higher-profile one nearby, Ciro’s Speakeasy and Supper Club on Bayshore Boulevard, permanently closed in April 2024 after structural problems turned up in its building — its owners have said they’re looking for a new location but haven’t announced one. That leaves Jekyll as one of the more established hidden-door bars currently open in this part of Tampa.
Reservations go through OpenTable and are worth making — this is a small room. You’ll need a valid ID; it’s 21 and up. Note there’s a 3% venue fee added to every check on top of gratuity, disclosed directly on the bar’s own site.
Good to know: Jekyll is at 705 S. Oregon Ave., Tampa (behind Sesame, inside Hyde Park Village). Open Tuesday–Wednesday 5–11 p.m., Thursday–Saturday 5 p.m.–1 a.m.; closed Sunday and Monday.