Cafe D’Mongos Speakeasy
tucked into a quiet street in downtown Detroit, a tiny nightclub with an outsize personality pumps out jazz and soul on select weekend nights. Cafe D’Mongo’s Speakeasy hosts politicians, celebrities, rappers, power brokers, scene kids and not a few underworld characters. Presiding over all of the genial chaos is Larry Mongo.
Mongo’s roots in Detroit go back over a hundred years, to an ancestor fleeing murder charges in North Carolina who set up shop as a smuggler and gambler. For decades, the Mongo family ran booze for the notorious Purple Gang during Prohibition and ran “the numbers”—an underground lottery system popular in Detroit—for kingpin Eddie Wingate.