This DC Strip Club Wants You to Try Its Food

A few months ago, while walking to the Trader Joe’s in Glover Park, I noticed something unusual: My local strip club was advertising that its mozzarella sticks could be purchased through Uber Eats. I contemplated this for a while. When someone orders delivery, wouldn’t they prefer an establishment whose sole focus is the culinary arts? And isn’t the whole point of a strip-club kitchen that you eat the food on the premises without taking your eyes off the stage?

To investigate, I went to get some food from the Good Guys Club, which is inside a discreet brown building by Whole Foods on Wisconsin Avenue. When I pushed through the door on a Friday night, the first thing I saw was a woman’s nude hindquarters shaking atop a bright-lit stage. I didn’t have time to linger, though: Two managers—Jenna Gross and Michael Aloupis—were expecting me, and they whisked me upstairs into an office to chat. I sat facing two hefty safes and a smattering of filing cabinets, one of them labeled corsets/fishnets.

Food delivery is apparently not a common revenue stream for strip clubs—but since Good Guys started doing it last winter, Aloupis says it’s been “picking up big time.” Now Uber Eats and DoorDash account for around a third of the club’s total food sales, more than 200 delivery orders a week. The menu is broad: grilled salmon, omelets, salads, tiramisu. Belgian waffles and jalapeño poppers. The “Good Guys Famous Steak N’ Eggs.” Since the club is open until 2 or 3 in the morning, about 60 percent of delivery orders come in after midnight, once other nearby restaurants have closed.

To show me the food, Aloupis led me down two flights of stairs to a neatly kept basement kitchen, where a DoorDash order was in the works: fries and mozzarella sticks sizzling in oil, almost ready to go. Once it was packaged, I followed the food runner upstairs to a corner by the front door, where he placed the order next to a DJ booth, two ATMs, and a cigarette vending machine, about ten feet from a woman dancing in a G-string and five-inch clear platform heels. For a couple of minutes, the food sat atop a red machine that breaks bills into ones.

From the outside, it’s not clear that Good Guys is a strip club, so when delivery drivers arrive, they’re often surprised. “The looks on their faces are priceless,” Aloupis told me. “They walk in with their mouths wide open. They’re not watching where they’re walking. They’re just mesmerized.” But the driver for this particular order was unfazed; after he flashed the DoorDash app on his phone, he grabbed the bag from the retired DC cop working the door and was off.

At one point, I asked Aloupis what the dancers like to eat, and he raved about a rice bowl that’s not yet on the menu: vegetables and meat tossed in a sweet Thai chili sauce. In the kitchen, I ordered one to go. For a few minutes, as I waited for my food, I watched a woman with long black hair and strappy stilettos dance on a lighted stage, a mirror behind her providing a panoramic view. When my rice bowl was ready, I carried it home to eat. The dancers were right: It was good.

This article appears in the January 2024 issue of Washingtonian.

Sylvie McNamara

Staff Writer