In Your Face, Kids: There's A Harry Potter Themed Bar And You Can't Come

If you’re a parent who also happens to be a Harry Potter super fan, then you know there’s nothing more exciting than sharing the wonder of the wizarding world with your kids. Except, now there is something more exciting: finding a babysitter so you can hitch a ride to Canada and get drunk with your muggle mom friends in a Harry Potter themed bar.

The Lockhart — named for failed Hogwarts professor Gilderoy Lockhart — is a new Toronto bar co-owned by Harry Potter enthusiasts, Paris Xerx and Matt Rocks. To the untrained eye, it appears to be your run-of-the-mill neighborhood tavern, but anyone with a basic knowledge of all things witchcraft and wizardry will immediately see the place is a Harry Potter heaven.

According to Now Toronto, the bar area is designed to look like a modern apothecary, there’s a Deathly Hallows symbol hidden somewhere in the building, and the menu includes awesome Potter themed drinks like The Shacklebolt, which is a yummy mix of ginger beer and spiced rum. They also have a drink that’s supposedly based on such an obscure Harry Potter reference that they’ll give you a free one if you figure out what it is.

The owners say they tried their best to pay homage to Harry Potter without making the place feel too gimmicky. Their menu features a bevy of housemade beers and crafty cocktails with references that are subtle enough to pass as normal for non-fans. As one of the owners told Now Toronto, “Without knowing any of the Harry Potter stuff, you’ll already think this is a cool bar. You’d come here and see a stag’s head on the wall and think, ‘Wow, I love that,’ but a Harry Potter fan might say, ‘That’s a patronus.'”

The Harry Potter books have been around for more than a decade, so the series boasts plenty of grown-up fans, but it’s hard to find a place where you can go and geek out about your fandom without being surrounded by little kids. The idea of a Potter themed bar that references some of the finer details of the books and movies is definitely a welcome treat for those of us who’d rather not stand in line at Universal Studio’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter to get our Butterbeer on.

Most of us will probably need to wait until we can actually start traveling by enchanted broomstick before we’ll be able to take a vacation just to visit a bar. Still, it’s nice to know there’s a place in the world where grown-up Harry Potter fans can come out of the cupboard under the stairs and enjoy a quiet evening without the kids.