The only sign is a red neon "COCKTAILS" hung in the second-floor window of 1454 Gratiot. You miss it if you don't know to look up. Nelson Kazan opened Pocket Change there on April 23, 2025, in the same 1,200 square feet that used to be Collect Beer Bar.
Collect moved to the West Village in August. Kazan moved in shortly after. Kazan has been working Detroit bars for ten years.
The list is long. SheWolf Pastificio, which Hour Detroit named 2020 Restaurant of the Year. Flowers of Vietnam.
The Apparatus Room. Republic Tavern, which closed. He worked in the kitchens of all of them and then the bars of all of them.
The cocktail program at Pocket Change is the first one with his name on the door. The room is dark and red. Lush curtains.
Dim lighting. Forty-nine seats. A third-floor rooftop patio is up another flight.
Colin Tury of Tury Design did the build, the same designer who did Vecino and Supino Pizzeria a few blocks south. Kazan modeled the program on New York cocktail bars and Japanese hi-fi listening rooms. The wine list rotates weekly with most bottles under sixty dollars.
The signature is the Bingo Bango, a spicy tequila drink. Classic cocktails are on the menu without irony. The business partners are Kris and Fred Lelcaj, brothers, both of whom Kazan worked with at Sava's in Ann Arbor more than a decade ago.
Kris owns Babo Detroit in the Park-Shelton. Fred ran Fred's, a health café in Ann Arbor that closed in 2020. Their sister Sava Lelcaj Farah runs a small Ann Arbor restaurant empire.
The Lelcaj brothers bought the building. The plan is to revive Fred's on the ground floor, where Bunny Bunny used to be. The rooftop runs Sunday pop-ups.
The first one was Sarah Welch and Cameron Rolka of Mink in Corktown shucking oysters above Gratiot. There will be more. Pocket Change is what happens when a bartender who has worked under everyone else's name finally gets to design his own room and a building owner who likes him hands him the keys.
1454 Gratiot Ave., Eastern Market. Thursday 7 p.m.-midnight, Friday-Saturday 8 p.m.-2 a.m., Sunday 2-10 p.m.
