Apparently, a consultant’s life has its perks, though $200 for sodas seems like a giant ripoff.
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A great list being compiled over at Reddit. There’s a map version as well.
At the Green Leafe, Williamsburg, VA.
Drinking some big IPA’s (21st Amendment Brew Free or Die, and Southern Tier Unearthly)
The Guards to close tonight. Is it permanent?
The restaurant has stood defiantly along M Street NW in Georgetown for nearly half a century, watching the neighborhood transition from head shops to haute designer shoe stores. But starting tonight after the dinner service, The Guards will close. Perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. (via The Washington Post)
Along with the now-shuttered Garrett’s, the Guards was home to many memories in my early twenties (as well as late-night dancing after our rehearsal dinner).
Sad news.
This will be an interesting happy hour possibility in the neighborhood of our office…
Next month, one of the owners behind the Passenger will team up with a new group of partners to open the New York Avenue Beach Bar — which, yes, will be a bar. Filled with sand. Like the beach. First reported by the Post’s Fritz Hahn, Passenger’s Tom Brown is one of the men responsible for bringing in “about 80 tons” of sand, plus picnic tables, lounge chairs and multiple bars with cheap beer and rum punch.
Eater talked to co-owner Robert Bailey, who along with Brown and Karl Graham will be running the show at the New York Avenue Beach Bar — and who also provided the actual diorama of the bar you see here (click to enlarge). Though the original plan was for a mid-May soft opening, Bailey says the team now plans to open Cinco de Mayo weekend for a “special event,” meaning the sand will be in, there will be plenty of drinking and possibly a mariachi band and DJ. But the buildout won’t be complete, as they only take possession of the lot on May 1. So after Cinco de Mayo, the bar will close again until the buildout is complete, sometime in mid-May.
D.C.’s Economies of Ale: Why Is Craft Beer So Expensive Here? - Washington City Paper
I had just gotten back from a trip to Asheville, N.C., where craft beer is cheap, around $4 or less on draft at most places. That the rustic watering holes of a sleepy town in the Smoky Mountains charge less per pint than the finer establishments in the nation’s capital should come as little surprise.
But I’ve experienced similar sticker shock in San Francisco, where cost-of-living markers, including the average rent ($2,305) and average home price ($808,481), exceed even those of the pricey District. I nearly blew a bottle cap one night at a Haight Street bar called Toronado. One Flemish red ale, the Bockor Cuvee de Jacobins Rouge, was priced at $5. At D.C.’s Smoke & Barrel, the same beer costs $9.
Rare imports, of course, can be expensive anywhere. What’s most outrageous, though, is the difference in local beer prices. On my trip to San Francisco, many of the West Coast beers hovered around $4 or $5 a pint—and not just at the divey Toronado, either. Even the more upscale Monk’s Kettle offers local drafts for a Lincoln or less: Sierra Nevada Foam Pilsner for $5, Lagunitas Little Sumpin’ Wild for $4.25.
Yet, in Washington, where drinkers can now sample D.C.-brewed beers for the first time in 50 years, even the local brews aren’t particularly cheap. DC Brau Public Ale costs $6 on draft at The Big Hunt. At Tonic in Mt. Pleasant, the price is $7. The local brewery’s second effort, DC Brau Corruption, runs $6.50 on draft at both Meridian Pint and ChurchKey. All this for a brew that doesn’t even have to cross the District line!…
Why is good beer so frickin’ expensive in this town? I gulped down the rest of my $7 Guinness and tried to find out.
Offering my (slightly belated) welcome to D.C., New Belgium Brewing Co., at the Irish Channel.
Garrett’s was never the best bar in Georgetown, but it was a great spot for getting together with friends, and we had more than a few memorable nights there. (Often followed by dancing at the Guards).
The bar is gone, but you can take a piece home with you…online bidding for everything in the building starts tomorrow (but you have to register in order to bid).
(via INSPECT TODAY! Garrett’s Railroad Tavern Auction Washington DC — Rasmus Auctioneers)
Weekend culinary highlights: knackwurst and bratwurst platter at Biergarten Haus, along with liters of schwarzbier!
An Extra Yelping: Thunder Burger and Bar
Cross-posted on Yelp! (3 stars)
This review is just for the drinks, as we haven’t tried the burgers yet. Thunder has a well-selected draft list of American craft beers, including what seemed to be a heavy seasonal rotation, from spots like Ommegang, North Coast, and locals like Flying Dog and Dogfish Head. And what they don’t have on tap, they supplement with a bottle selection.
The vibe is a bit strange, as it’s halfway between standard Georgetown (exposed brick and preppy clientele) and quasi-dive bar (soundtrack from your neighbor’s garage as he was tuning up his Camaro in 1988).
Service was good at the bar, and the bartender was very helpful in helpin to craft flights. All drafts are available as standard servings or 4-ounce (I think) tasters, which can be be combinedin threes for a flight ($1 off).
All in all, seemed like a good spot to meet up with a beer loving friend, or to kill the middle of an afternoon in Georgetown, but probably not a destination.
And the N.Y. Times Style section strikes again, with a pretty obnoxious “bogus trend” story. This one on how you shouldn’t throw a house party without paying a bartender.
Mixing Drinks, Adding Class? - NYTimes.com
HER studio apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is just shy of 400 square feet, barely enough room for an Ikea open-shelf bookcase, a chocolate-brown tufted couch, a full-size bed and her brindle-coated Shih Tzu, Charlie. So when Claudia Argiro, 33, gave a holiday party last Saturday night, she pared down her guest list to about two dozen of her closest friends, hid the TV behind an industrial column wrapped with holiday lights and turned the media console into a bar. But one thing she had to have was a bartender.
“I’m an adult now, living by myself, and this is my sh-bam, my moment,” said Ms. Argiro, who runs a clothing boutique nearby called Charlie and Sam.
She called up Tealicious, a catering company in Queens, which sent over Eric Villani, a 33-year-old bartender, who was stationed in a two-foot-wide triangle in the middle of the room. For the next four hours, Mr. Villani stood there, not to make special cocktails, but to pour a vodka punch or a rum eggnog into clear plastic cups, trimmed with sugar-coated cherries and cinnamon sticks. His presence did not go unheralded in the apartment, in a new warehouse conversion along the Brooklyn waterfront, although the intimate cluster of guests could have easily served themselves.
“In my opinion, if you don’t have a bartender at your party, you’re a loser,” said Dustin Terry, who lives a floor below Ms. Argiro and said his job was to get models and Saudi royalty into hot clubs. “The bartender brings class and sophistication.” “If you can’t afford to hire a bartender,” he added, “you shouldn’t be having a party.”
That seems to be the consensus of a growing crowd of 30-something New Yorkers who wish to signal they’ve graduated from post-collegiate squalor to young professional coming of age. No matter how small their abodes, they won’t invite friends over for cocktails without the assistance of a bartender — even if there’s barely room for the bartender to stand.
Closing out one of the all-time great Saturdays with Irish tunes and brews at Murphy’s in Alexandria.
