In the early days of 2013, we wrote about a new cocktail series at Proof. Adam Bernbach, who runs the bar programs there and at sister restaurant Estadio, is well known for tinkering with classic drinks, and he has been using the series to showcase some of his signature riffs. So far, Bernbach has tackled the Manhattan, the whiskey sour, and the daiquiri.
This project went well, apparently, because Bernbach has decided to extend the series. Five more sessions are on the roster in February and March.
First up, on February 17, look out for takes on the Sazerac, that classic and potent cocktail from New Orleans that most commonly combines rye whiskey, Peychaud’s bitters, and muddled sugar or simple syrup in an absinthe- or herbsaint-rinsed glass. (Proof has been known to serve a Sazerac that combines Peychaud’s and angostura—as is traditional at the Napoleon House, a Sazerac destination in the French Quarter—and a cognac float. )
Fans of the Rob Roy (blended Scotch, red vermouth, bitters) should head to Proof on February 24. On March 3, you’ll find plays on that wonderful drink the Old-Fashioned. Staffers have about a month and a half to hone their arm muscles for gin fizz night on March 24. Finally, on the 31st, it’ll be time to take on the margarita.
The Sunday series runs from 6:30 to 9:30 in the lounge area only.
The Passenger's popular tiki Tuesday tradition has evolved into a new bar next door called Hogo. Photograph by Chris Leaman.
With its many excellent bars and restaurants, 14th Street may be where the kiddies come out to play on weekends, but if you’re into great cocktails without the insanity, I highly suggest a weekday evening bar crawl in the area around the Convention Center—quickly becoming one of the most exciting places in town to drink.
Tuesday marked the official debut of Hogo, Tom Brown’s new rum bar neighboring the Passenger, which he owns with brother Derek (Paul Ruppert is the brothers’ business partner). The drink menu screams tiki, but with its easygoing lighting and intimate booths, the interior feels like the Passenger and also the cool Atlas Room on H Street. I mean, there’s a portrait of Billy Murray as Steve Zissou out front—that alone should prepare you for an environment that’s more hipster than hokey. But sip enough Tom’s Punch—my favorite of the four drinks I tried (don’t judge)—and you’ll forget to lament the lack of loud, flowery shirts and thatch. The namesake cocktail involves two types of rum and falernum, a sweet syrup found in a lot of tiki drinks. The back of the space is to be a permanent pop-up venue where chefs can test future concepts. Currently, Passenger chef Javier Duran is playing around with a Hawaiian menu of Spam musubi, loco moco, and “mixed plate” with pork or salmon.
Before heading to Hogo, consider making a reservation at one of two drinking journeys nearby: Columbia Room or RogueSpirits. The former is, of course, the tranquil speakeasy inside the Passenger. A reservation buys you three fantastic cocktails—the first two are planned, and the third you design in collaboration with the bartender—and a food pairing. It’s $69 per person, but you’re not just purchasing consumables, you’re also buying a lovely experience. The atmosphere is transporting—guests gaze at jars full of esoteric ingredients as they chat with one another and the affable staff—and the net effect leaves you feeling more refreshed than tipsy, the exact best state in which to take on the tiki gods next door.
Head to Bar Pilar for a cocktail to cure your stormy weather blues this weekend. Photograph courtesy of Bar Pilar.
Hurricane Sandy hits this weekend, meaning you can a) panic and hoard canned/bottled items, or b) use it as an excuse to spend the day in a bar with good friends and a strong drink. We’re choosing the latter, and plan on sipping a tasty Dark and Stormy cocktail in honor of the weather. The classic combination of dark rum, ginger beer, and fresh-squeezed lime is perfect for easing the pain of inclement weather, and the sweet-spicy flavor profile makes it an ideal gateway cocktail between this oddly summery weather and fall. Here are a dozen to try this weekend (points and free Advil if you get to them all).
Head to this laid-back Atlas District joint for a well-made Stormy, which the bar has touted as the house drink since 2005.
Ride out the storm like the Old Man and the Sea in the dim lights of this Hemingway-themed spot, which serves up a delicious Dark and Stormy over crushed ice.
In the mood for a nonalcoholic version of the classic? One of our favorite mocktails in town is the West Indian Limeade, a refreshing sip with lime, ginger syrup, bitters, and sparkling water. (They might spike it if you ask nicely.)
The name of 14th Street’s newest watering hole makes you think beer, but the bar serves up a tasty Gosling’s-based libation.
Both the DC and Rockville locations offer a Stormy made with spicy-sweet house-made ginger beer.
Conquer the storm like a king with a classic Dark and Stormy, served here in a goblet.
Possibly the priciest Stormy on our list at $15, but you’ll fare the bad weather in a plush, subterranean hotel bar with a potent drink and complimentary nibbles such as wasabi peas and mixed nuts.
While the classic Dark and Stormy is no longer listed on the menu, all the ingredients for the popular cocktail are stashed behind the bar for those in the know: fresh lime for muddling, Gosling’s Black Seal rum, and Fentiman’s ginger beer.
Dance until the rain stops at this U Street spot, which serves Stormies alongside island beats and Jamaican patties filled with jerk chicken, beef, and goat.
Happy hour continues on the weekend at this Bethesda Row spot, meaning you can accompany your Dark and Stormy with $5 plates of spicy potstickers or mini lamb burgers in the bar (Saturday 4 to 7 PM).
Watch the rain fall at this window-walled restaurant as you sip this version of the Stormy, concocted with house-made ginger beer.
Cocktail mastermind Todd Thrasher is behind a spin on the Stormy called There’s No Cause for Alarm, a beery hoptail with rum, ginger beer, Bass red ale, smoked sugar, mezcal, and spicy bitters.
It is difficult to overstate Murray Stenson’s significance in the global craft cocktail scene. The career Seattle barman—for years a fixture at Pike Place Market’s Zig Zag Café—studied cocktail and spirits history back when that was a highly eccentric thing to do, and his legendary knowledge drew booze nerds the world over to the bar stools at Zig Zag, where they’d sit, scribbling into notepads, as Stenson made drinks and talked shop.
What makes Stenson so beloved to the bartenders he has mentored, however, is his emphasis on the service side of the job. As he told writer Paul Clarke in a recent Imbibe profile, “I enjoy being behind the bar. That’s where you meet all the really interesting people.”
Now Stenson is sick with a heart ailment that prevents him from working at Seattle’s Canon, where he has tended bar most recently. (The throngs who came to see him at Zig Zag eventually became too much for him.) Like a lot of people in his industry, Stenson has no medical insurance, and so his friends have created MurrayAid to raise funds to defray his medical costs. These events have put the spotlight on a larger issue—the vast number of bar and restaurant employees who live without insurance—as evidenced by a tweet by MSNBC liberal commentator Rachel Maddow. She forwarded a link to MurrayAid along with the message: “Someday we won’t have to do this—everyone will be covered.”
Murrayaid benefits are being planned at bars in Australia, Canada, and across the States.
Washington’s bartenders are getting a lot of national magazine love of late, confirming what we already know: The District drinking scene is pretty great and just keeps getting better.
GQ just published a big beer-filled issue that lists ChurchKey and Birch & Barley as one of its 12 Bars for Beer Lovers, alongside Bailey’s Taproom in Portland and Brooklyn’s Spuytin Duyvil. (Unfortunately we didn’t make it into the 5 Best Beer Cities in America category—damn you, Philly.)
Rogue 24 cheftender Bryan Tetorakis is named Mixologist of the Month by the tony folks at Wine Enthusiast for his molecular spins on classic drinks. We’ve been fans of Tetorakis’s work for awhile, from smoked highballs at an outdoor concert to a spin on an Aviation cocktail with a cherry sphere at a $1,000-per-person fundraiser. Meanwhile, Rogue 24 chef R.J. Cooper is making a few Internet waves of his own: He’s set to appear in a six-episode Web show called Chefs of Anarchy, beginning this Thursday.
What Washington bars do you think should be getting more attention, national or otherwise? Leave us your suggestions in the comments section.
The barrel-aged Brooklyn cocktail at BLT Steak. Photographs by Andrew Propp.
Like a good wine list and a few craft beers on tap, having an interesting cocktail program is par for the course at ambitious new restaurants, and established spots are eager to keep up.
Bartender Jon Harris brings his playful cocktails to Firefly, which reopens at the end of this month. Photograph by Jeff Elkins.
“Mystical woodland” is how Jon Harris describes the vibe at Firefly, the twinkly restaurant inside Hotel Madera at 1310 New Hampshire Avenue, Northwest. Through September, Firefly is undergoing a renovation that will keep intact the candlelit tree at its center but add a porch swing and a new lounge, and elongate the bar itself. It will also create a more clearly demarcated bar area—it currently sort of flows right into the dining room—and add more bar seating. To oversee this new drinking attraction, managing group Kimpton Hotels tapped Harris.
Cashion’s has long been an Adams Morgan neighborhood spot, but it’s adding one more incentive for regulars: a bar food menu, launching this Thursday.
Offered during normal dinner hours, the lineup of new dishes supplements one of our favorite late-night menus, which run at the bar on Friday and Saturday nights from midnight until 2. Fortunately you won’t have to wait until the wee hours for the new dishes from chef John Manolatos, such as a juicy pork burger topped with grilled onions, cornichon, and Gruyère, crispy potatoes with garlic aïoli, and house-made pork rinds. You’ll also find a new cocktail list with riffs on the classics, like a Manhattan made with fig-infused Bulleit Bourbon and a mint julep mixed with the bartender favorite Fernet Branca. (See samples of both menus below.)
You may want to try it out on night one, but if you can hold off, the Cashion’s crew is offering $2 off all of the new plates on Friday (which all currently clock in at under ten bucks). Also look for a few Oktoberfest specials starting Saturday.
Sushiko
owner
Daisuke Utagawa and his partners have been working on their two forthcoming Gallery Place restaurants—a
40-seat ramen spot and a separate upstairs
izakaya, which will seat about 100—for more than two years. More recently, they added an
additional project to the plans: a cocktail bar at 600 F Street, Northwest, just down
the street from the new restaurants at 705 Sixth Street.
The team—which includes 18th Street Lounge co-founder
Yama Jewayni, chef and Think Food Group vet
Katsuya Fukushima, and designers at the DC firm Edit—traveled to Japan together to gather inspiration
for the new projects. They spent time at the factory in Sapporo that will supply the
noodles for their ramen—noodles that Utagawa and Fukushima agree can not be replicated
in the States. They also visited a lot of restaurants and bars, and it was the Japanese
drinking spots that inspired them to open the cocktail bar. Utagawa points out that
there are virtually no restrictions on liquor sales in Japan, which has helped create
an amazing variety of bars in that country.
Buy one tequila cocktail, get a free one for your friend tonight at Bandolero. Photograph by Madeline Tank.
Yes, it’s always national something day. What can we say? We’re suckers for this stuff. Especially when it involves drink specials and new taco bars with really exciting food. So here it is: Tonight, El Chucho is offering $4 shots of Tequila Real Blanco, a spirit newly available to the states and only available in the Washington market, and $5 margaritas. The restaurant is also taking 20 percent off of every offering on the tequila and mezcal menu. Bonard Molina, Tequila Real importer, will be on hand to talk agave spirits.
Not to be outdone, Mike Isabella’s Georgetown spot, Bandolero, has a special called “tequila for amigos” that begins at 4 PM. Buy one agave-based spirit neat, on the rocks, or in a cocktail, and the second one—which you will presumably pass on to your amigo—is gratis. The special lasts all night.
J&G Steakhouse is charging just $5 for its ginger margarita tonight from 5:30 to 7 PM; the drink is regularly $12.
Enjoy.
See Also:
Imbiber’s Agenda: 5 Cocktails to Try This Weekend
It’s National Margarita Day—Here’s Where to Drink
