Food

5 DC Nominees for Food & Wine Magazine’s Best New Bars

Start voting for your favorites.

Southern Efficiency is one of the five local watering holes nominated in Food & Wine magazine's Best New Bars contest. Photograph by Andrew Propp.

Five Washington watering holes made the long list for Food & Wine‘s newest set of accolades: The People’s Best New Bars 2014. The voter’s-choice awards—a liquid spinoff of the Best New Chef contest held earlier this year—runs through September 30. Local nominees include 2 Birds 1 Stone, Dram & Grain in Jack Rose, the Partisan, Red Light, and Southern Efficiency.

The mix is pretty eclectic, representing underground cocktail dens (2 Birds, Dram), restaurant/bar hybrids (Partisan), sweets spots (Red Light) and bourbon-centric boozers (Southern Efficiency). All face stiff competition in the Northeast category, including from lauded mixology bars such as New York’s Booker and Dax and Hop Sing Laundromat in Philly. All the more reason to vote early and often.

Look for an announcement with the winners on October 2

Find Anna Spiegel on Twitter at @annaspiegs.

Food Editor

Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.