The Mason & Rook hotel—the new name for Kimpton’s Hotel Helix when it reopens later this year in Logan Circle—will be anchored by a cocktail bar called Radiator, which the hospitality company says is an homage to the car dealerships and body shops that once lined 14th Street, Northwest.
Kimpton is snagging Ardeo + Bardeo chef Jonathan Dearden to run Radiator’s kitchen. Dearden was brought into the Cleveland Park restaurant last June after working with hotelier Andre Balazs in New York.
The bar, Kimpton writes in a press release, will serve a “carefully curated range of whiskeys and off-the-beaten path spirits,” though supposedly without the “modernist smoke and mirrors” often found in restaurant-industry promotional jargon.
The DC-based firm GrizForm is designing the 57-seat bar, which will include “garage door-inspired walls” and other industrial motifs, nods to 14th Street’s history as DC’s “auto row.” In the warmer months, Radiator—a name that suggests a mechanical, impersonal kind of warmth—will feature a 50-seat patio outfitted with a fire pit and a shuffleboard court.
The 14th Street corridor was built up in the early 20th century with dealerships and repair shops. Some of the original buildings have since been transformed into the residential and cultural amenities that now make up one of Washington’s chicest corridors, most famously the two old dealerships at 14th and P streets that became the Studio Theatre in 1987 and jump-started the neighborhood’s redevelopment.
Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.
