Photograph by Matthew Worden

PX, a speakeasy-style bar in Old Town Alexandria, specializes in inventive cocktails.

Outsiders sometimes sell Washington’s nightlife short, calling our bars unexciting and maligning our crowds as nothing but ambitious suits.

Cut to President Obama’s arrival in January, and Washington is suddenly cool, its restaurants and bars described as pulsing with energy and full of diversity.

Washingtonians know that the city’s transformation has been anything but sudden. The H Street corridor in Northeast DC has been blossoming for the past three years, the wine-bar craze started in late 2007, and the area’s nightlife has been abuzz with creativity for some time—it just took the outsiders a while to catch up.

In the following pages, we celebrate Washington’s thriving going-out scene as it continues to push forward—recession be damned. By the time you read this, Room 11, a wine bar in DC’s Columbia Heights, will be open (or very close to it) and nightlife guru Joe Englert’s much-anticipated H Street Country Club—a bar with a mini-golf course—will be the latest addition to the oddball bars in that part of the city.

Will some omissions provoke debate? You bet. But we’re confident our list comprises the most essential Washington bars.

Happy reading—and drink up! 

—Alejandro Salinas

→ The Best Bars in Washington
→ Nightlife Guides: Dancing, Music, Happy Hours, and More
→ Happy Hour Finder
→ Chat With Four Great Bartenders
→ Video Cocktail Recipes
→ Give Us Your Bar Feedback
→ Readers' Favorite Happy Hours, Margaritas, and More
→ Our March Nightlife Issue, On Stands Now