Dragonfly Detroit

Dragonfly opened in January 2022 as the casual, colorful counterpart to Freya, the tasting-menu restaurant next door — both part of Sandy Levine's Detroit restaurant group, with Freya's kitchen supplying the food menu. The bar sits at 2929 E. Grand Boulevard in New Center (enter on the Beaubien side), and its drink program has been shaped by bartender Tara Jagodzinski, whose resume includes the Library inside the Detroit Club and Peterboro.

The "Alcohol-Free Cocktails" section of the menu isn't a token gesture: BBB (blood orange, blackberry oleo), Purps (coconut cream, pineapple, cinnamon, ube), and Wonder When Winds of Winter (apple cider vinegar, palm sugar, pear) draw on the same house-made syrups, purees, and shrubs used across the bar's full cocktail list, rather than a bottled substitute poured as an afterthought.

Happy hour (Tuesday through Saturday, 5–7pm) extends the same treatment to beer: Ted Segers' "Unleaded" brew sits on the $5 happy-hour list right alongside the beer-and-a-shot special, priced and positioned as a normal choice rather than a special request.

Dragonfly and Freya share a building in New Center, with rotating artwork from Detroit artists on the walls and a small-plates food menu prepared by Freya's kitchen. The pairing gives Dragonfly access to a serious culinary kitchen while keeping its own identity as the neighborhood's happy-hour bar, where non-alcoholic drinks have had equal billing on the menu since opening.