Derek Brown’s Miracle on Seventh Street is going to have some competition for the holiday-drinking market this winter. Garden District, the 14th St., Northwest, beer garden, is transforming itself for the festivities and will become a Christmas-themed drinking den starting Friday.
The transformation comes from the brain of longtime employee James Waterhouse, who has brought up the concept of doing a Christmas-themed beer garden every winter for years.
“I was always like, ‘C’mon man, let’s just go on vacation,’ ” owner Tad Curtz says. “Finally I said, ‘If you are that excited about this I want to make it happen.’ ”
From Friday until December 18, Garden District will become a Munich-style beer garden. The outdoor patio’s picnic tables will be outfitted with heaters and decked out for the season. Expect over a quarter-mile of tinsel, 10,000 twinkling lights, Christmas music, and plenty of holiday cheer in the form of an expanded beverage menu. In addition to Garden District’s lineup of German beers, you’ll also be able to sip on a specialty beverage menu. Winter warmers will include drinks with names including Miracle on 14th St Mulled Wine, Office Party Punch, Santa’s Little Helper Hot Chocolate, and Blitzen’s Blitzed Hot Cider. For those truly committed to the festivities, there will be eggnog shots.
On weekends there will also be a pop-up holiday market featuring a rotating selection of local vendors selling ceramics, apparel, jewelry, glassware, Turkish candies, and other crafts.
Garden District’s holiday conversion will even include a Christmas-tree lot, offering Douglas firs and spruces between four and eight feet tall for about $50 a tree. For those too timid to brave the outdoor patio, Garden District’s indoor bar will also remain open and will be serve a limited menu of its traditional bar bites. And perhaps, unlike some other Christmas bars, you won’t have to wait in a line stretching three blocks.
“If this year is a success, we are hoping to do it bigger and better next year,” Curtz says.
Garden District will close for the season December 18 and will reopen in March 2017.
Hayley is an Associate Editor at Washingtonian Weddings. Previously she was the the Style Editor at The Local Palate, a Southern food culture magazine based out of Charleston, South Carolina. You can follow her on instagram @wandertaste.
