About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Easy Tiger Tavern, 1817 Columbia Rd., NW.
Exiles Bar on U Street, with its unique allegiances (Liverpool FC, Penn State, and the Buffalo Bills), has become one of the city’s most beloved and distinctive sports bars.
Now, it has a new sibling in Adams Morgan: Easy Tiger Tavern, which opened June 1 after a months-long delay.
Easy Tiger replaces the former Pop’s Sea Bar on Columbia Road, and it caters to its own transatlantic pair of fanbases: Arsenal and Louisiana State University. They may be niches, but both have diehard fans.
“The first day we were open at least four people came in and said ‘we’re so glad you’re an LSU bar,’” says co-owner Jennie Smith. “This is just a place for some of our community to come hang out and feel like it’s theirs.”
Smith knows the neighborhood well. She tended bar at the now-closed Smoke & Barrel around the corner, and eventually became its director of operations. When Donagh Gilhooly, Brian Hillery, and Karl Keane, the owners of Exiles, were looking to open a new outpost in Adams Morgan, they tapped Smith for help.
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The team wanted Easy Tiger to be a friendly rival to Exiles—an Arsenal bar versus a Liverpool one. But like Exiles, the newcomer’s ambitions go beyond broadcasting games and pouring up beers.
Draft and canned beers are complemented by beverage director Wes Horton’s cocktails, such as the tiki-inspired Crash Landing (rum, lemon, pineapple, and rice orgeat). The bar menu from chef Henry Reyes incorporates wings and loaded tots, but also burrata with seasonal vegetables, a crispy buffalo chicken sandwich, and tempura-battered fish and chips, a favorite of Smith’s.
“If I see fish and chips on a menu I don’t normally order them, and this one really blows it out of the water,” she says.
Open until 2 AM, Easy Tiger is already a raucous scene. But with pub-style wood paneling and hunter green walls, it’s also meant to be a cozy, friendly place to eat and relax.
“Everyone comes into Exiles and feels comfortable,” Smith says. “That’s what we wanted here.”
