About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Hopscotch at Union Market. 1309 Fifth St., NE.
Open daily 11 AM through 7 PM through April 1. Closed Monday, March 25.
As a lawyer formerly prosecuting sex crimes, Darryl Collins often found himself drinking to decompress. Alcoholism runs in his family, and so he realized he needed to start being more conscientious about his drinking. That’s when he picked up his first nonalcoholic beer from Athletic Brewing Co. “It just changed my whole outlook. Going out and socializing and whatnot, hey, I can have a non-alcoholic beer and be fine,” he says. His interest in zero-proof beverages only grew from there, and he was blown away to find out just how many nonalcoholic products are on the market after attending booze-free Mindful Drinking Festival last year.
It all led Collins, who’s now a lawyer with the federal government, to open a zero-proof bottle shop called Hopscotch in Baltimore last August. Now, that store is popping up in DC’s Union Market until April 1. Collins says he’s interested in finding a permanent home in DC, too.
“I found that many people were driving from all across the area to come to Hopscotch to get a nonalcoholic beverage option that’s normally not offered at many other places,” Collins says. “So many people from DC were coming up saying ‘Hey, you have to bring it down to DC.”
The Baltimore location stocks more than 200 nonalcoholic wines, beers, spirits, cocktails, and more with a tasting counter where you can sample around 50 of them. The temporary DC outpost is a smaller version with 50 rotating products with several available for tastings.
“Everything you would find normally in a liquor store we have,” says Collins, who describes himself as sober curious rather than completely sober. “Whether you’re looking for tequila, rum, gin, whiskey—we have all of that. With regard to wine, we have Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir… We truly have everything, in addition to beer as well.”
Filling the shelves has been relatively easy given the explosion of the nonalcoholic beverage market. “There are over a thousand products on the market, but not every product is good,” Collins says. He taste tests almost everything and says he refuses to stock anything that doesn’t meet his standards.
Collins says he’s looking for opportunities to pop-up elsewhere in DC and eventually find something more long term. And he’s not the only one trying out an alcohol-free concept: A similar zero-proof pop-up bottle shop and bar from Umbrella Dry Drinks launched in Alexandria in early 2022. Meanwhile, DC’s very first bar with no alcohol, Binge Bar, opened on H Street Northeast last year.
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
