Opening Champagne With a Saber at the Baroness Enaoris Hernandez, left, and Amanda Speranza shared a bottle of Champagne at the Baroness. Mélanie Lemieux showed Ms. Speranza how to open a bottle of Champagne with a saber. But buyer - and buyer's friends watching - beware. On very rare occasions, the bottle explodes. Along with her husband, Kyle Radzyminski, 35, Ms. Lemieux, 27, a Montreal transplant who named the bar for her French great-great-grandmother, has given a Napoleonic boost to a dark street with a laundromat, a liquor store and new apartments. JetBlue employees from nearby, first dates and regulars are relieved to find funky quaintness; only wine, beer and sparkling beverages are served, along with Murray's cheeses, flatbread pizzas and charcuterie. A soundtrack of covers stirs reminiscent smiles or singalongs, accentuated by the occasional popping and clapping. IN THE SEATS The good friends Amanda Speranza, 29, a mental health counselor, and Enaoris Hernandez, 27, a marketer for a home health care company. Ms. Speranza helps people all day but had a bad one herself on Monday. She was worn down by holiday stress and frayed friendships with those moving away or having babies - "just the responsibilities of growing up," she said. But Ms. Hernandez was there for her, arriving at her door in Bayside with a car and cannolis, insisting on a girls" night out. What better way to get out that pent-up frustration? SWORDPLAY AT THE BAR Ms. Lemieux instructed a nervous Ms. Speranza to move the sword up the neck along the seam of the bottle, toward its collar. Ms. Speranza pointed the saber at a burlap sack hanging next to the bar and threw her arm into the act. Suddenly, the bottle shattered in several large, jagged pieces, one striking the stomach of a photographer standing two feet away. A sweater provided some cushion. Mr. Radzyminski said that pressure had probably built inside a defective bottle, and that this had never happened before. They gave Ms. Speranza another try. This time, she broke the glass collar in one clean piece, the cork popping resoundingly. Ms. Hernandez shouted, "Mazel tov!" Ms. Speranza couldn't stop smiling. "That felt so ... triumphant," she said. TIME TO EAT Sitting on couches in the raised corner, complete with French romance novels, they ate a cheese plate with tomme de Savoie and Brie double crème, dried fruit and bread ($15) and a margherita flatbread ($12). A bottle of Duc de Romet Prestige Brut ($60) chilled in a bucket. WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT The power of the documentary "Blackfish," about a SeaWorld orca implicated in three deaths. They caught up on their respective holidays and felt invigorated by the evening. "Thank you so much for dragging me out tonight," Ms. Speranza said, adding that what happened with the bottle was much like her day: "I got a second chance." At $60 a pop, their outing may not become a weekly ritual, but it felt perfect for the second-to-last night of the year. I love Saber Monday! Ms. Speranza exclaimed.