This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Washington DC
Washington is a centre for gossip that does, and doesn’t, matter. Downtown is filled with secrets that journalists, lobbyists and politicians trade for profit. Every couple of years, the people inside the city seek to inflame or tame the mood outside it, causing total upheaval. Fortunes come and go. In short, it’s the perfect place for a drink. And it has built, in turn, a thriving cocktail scene.
The power-hungry class meets and murmurs at a handful of bars near the White House: the Round Robin, the St Regis, the Quill, The Occidental, Off the Record. That’s where tourists go too, to get a sense of Washington.
I love these bars — especially The Occidental for a clean Green Alaska, José Andrés’s experimental “cocktail lab” Barmini, the whiskey palace that is the Jack Rose Dining Saloon and Mr Lyan’s wild concoctions at Silver Lyan. But lots of lush guides will send you there. And at heart, I’m a DC kid with a soft spot for the if-you-know-you-know ones, where you can take a first date, meet old friends, cheer on the Commanders and still get some of the city’s best drinks.
So when my editor asked me to start drinking, professionally, a month after my first child Colton was born, I wanted to show off DC from the view of the bartenders who run it. I imagined “researching” would be a burden on my marriage. But my wife, Tessa, is also a journalist from DC, who thought the opportunity to write about something other than politics, and show off the city we love, was too good to pass up.
Plus, you can take a baby to a bar, right?
So we made a plan: at each bar, I’d ask the bartender for their favourite cocktail. I’d then go to that bar, try the recommended cocktail and ask again. This twisted game of bartender telephone would create a trail across the city, and hopefully teach us something. In Tessa’s honour, I started with her favourite bar in Washington.
To begin, a Janissary Corps at The Green Zone
2226 18th STREET NW, Adams Morgan
With the swirling and shaking, the performance before tasting, a cocktail is all about anticipation. Order a Janissary Corps at The Green Zone and let it build.
The bartender, Ian Gaupp, will freeze your glass with liquid nitrogen and fill it with Lebanese gin, pistachio, lemon, brown butter, and something described on the menu as “Silky Magic”.
This bar is a few blocks from my old apartment in Adams Morgan. For years, I’d walk in and order this drink without knowing exactly why I loved it — the secret ingredient tasted like a versatile holiday spice. Tessa, a coupe-glass devotee, always ordered the delicious Lebanese No 1 — cognac with apricot and lemon.
This time, I brought my new FT colleague (also named Ian), for a less biased perspective. He loved the Janissary Corps, too. He praised its lightness, its “pop of citrus” and . . . “is that cardamom?” Yes, cardamom, bartender Ian confirmed. The tincture’s secret ingredient had been solved by a first-timer.
Bartender Ian considered where to send me for his favourite cocktail. “Service Bar comes to mind right away,” he said. The drink is “halfway between a cocktail and a shot. It’s called a Mind Eraser.”
Service bar is known in the industry as a 2am hang-out spot. I had a newborn at home. I asked for another option.
Website; Directions
Ian at The Green Zone sent me for a Classic Daiquiri at Astoria DC
1521 17th STREET NW, Dupont Circle
A few days later, I went a mile south on 17th Street to Astoria DC, where Ian said I’d have “two or three” daiquiris and “kind of stumble on out of there”. He wasn’t wrong.
The place was buzzing. On a rainy Saturday, I arrived 10 minutes before it opened at 5pm and was the 10th person in the queue. Every seat inside was taken, mostly by couples on a date night, so they granted me a spot at the bar to stand and talk with the bartender, David Hu.
Astoria has the form and feel of an elegant, 1920s art deco subway car. The music of Bahamas played in the background. “I got all the time in the world,” it went. “Don’t you want some of that?”
At the centre of the drinks menu was a Classic Daiquiri, and sprawling from it were options for every imaginable riff on the category. I ordered the classic and watched David crack ice into shards. Served in a frosted coupe with a slice of lime, my Daiquiri was cold and not-too-sweet, cutting through the heat of my dan dan noodles, which were served with pork, peanuts, chilli oil, garlic, scallion, sesame and pickled mustard greens. It was a perfect meal.
My experience was only slightly ruined by the generosity of David, who offered to mix me some sweeter Daiquiris to try — the grenadine-laced Detroit Daisy and the pineapple and Campari-themed Lost Lake — which left me a bit lightheaded by the time I took off home.
Before I did, I asked him where to go next. He sent me to the other side of town.
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David at Astoria DC sent me for a Dirty Martini at Trouble Bird
1346 4th STREET SE, Navy Yard
A week after my first sip at The Green Zone, I felt the tour was slipping out of my hands. David’s recommendation — a vodka Martini at Trouble Bird in Southeast DC’s Navy Yard — is a drink I never order, at a bar I’ve never been to, in a neighbourhood I rarely visit.
My companion for this part of the tour was an old friend and DC native, Charlie, who considers Navy Yard a “corporate hellscape”.
Before the Nationals opened their baseball stadium in 2008, the neighbourhood was razed and rebuilt with a series of glass boxes that now house mostly younger congressional staffers, who are somehow able to afford $17 salads at Sweetgreen, $6 lattes at Gregorys Coffee and $2,000-a-month studio apartments on yearly salaries less than $80,000.
Trouble Bird addresses this problem with $10 Martinis at happy hour.
David had recommended a “slightly Dirty” Martini here, as too much olive juice can lower the drink’s temperature. It was right to take his lead. Charlie called his “dangerously smooth”.
What Trouble Bird loses in architectural charm — unless you like your drinking hole with floor-to-ceiling windows — it makes up for with Justin Cara-Donna, its instantly appealing and accomplished bartender. Justin is a veteran of Silver Lyan and the beloved but since closed Columbia Room — he wouldn’t steer a new dad awry on this ridiculous mission. Halfway through my Martini, he replaced my glass with a frosted one to keep the drink good to the last drop.
He also wanted to share his newest concoctions, offering us Midori Sours with gin, honeydew, lime, cucumber bitters and egg white — basically candy in a glass. These two drinks wouldn’t be my usual orders. But Justin’s capable hands turned a Dirty Martini sceptic into an admirer.
Trouble Bird converted these Navy Yard snobs. Charlie said a bar run by “cool, normal people” in this neighbourhood “gets bonus points”. It is also next door to Albi, which is worth visiting — the excellent Michelin-starred Palestinian restaurant run by chef Michael Rafidi, winner of the James Beard award for outstanding chef in 2024.
I asked Justin for my next spot. His colleague suggested a Zombie, a potent tiki cocktail, but Justin demurred. “I’ll take it easy on you,” he said and chose a carbonated drink at a cocktail joint attached to a sandwich shop. The American dream.
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Justin at Trouble Bird sent me for an Irish Cream Soda at Your Only Friend
1114 9th STREET NW, between MouNT VERNON SQUARE and shaw
Your Only Friend is appropriately titled. It sits in no man’s land, between the convention centre and a cluster of great restaurants known as Blagden Alley, in a neighbourhood no one can really name. Google Maps says this is Mount Vernon Square, but Your Only Friend says it’s Shaw.
I’m here with Tessa on Justin’s recommendation. Colton, now 10 weeks old, is happily staring at us from his stroller in our little nook, oblivious to the stunning red and yellow stained-glass ceiling above his head.
First, the food: casual and excellent, done so well that it recently earned Michelin Bib Gourmand status. My sausage and peppers sandwich was groaningly good. Tessa’s chicken Caesar sandwich had “great tang” and came out piping hot. The Seattle fries — with bonita flakes that make them look like they’re breathing — were worth trying.
But really, we were here for the drinks. The bartender, Walter Raubeson, summed up the Irish Cream Soda as “clarification, carbonation and nostalgia”, and it was exactly that: it’s made with whisky and tasted like a creamsicle. Tessa’s Amaretto Sour was sweet, nutty and tart.
“I want to play a joke on you,” said Walter before we took off. He slipped me a mezcal-Mountain Dew-Smirnoff Ice concoction. (I fear I now have to describe, for erudite FT readers, the viral American tradition that requires one to kneel and drink any Smirnoff Ice that comes into their path.) “We never let our friends leave without being ‘iced,’” he said. I should have been upset, but it tasted like a Jolly Rancher.
For our next stop, Walter considered Allegory, a classy speakeasy at the Eaton hotel, but decided that the bars on my list weren’t dive-y enough. He chose a drink at The Mirror, just a 15-minute walk away. Tessa said we should go, immediately.
So off we went — Tessa, Colton and me — down K Street.
Website; Directions
Walter at Your Only Friend sent me for a Boulevardier at The Mirror
1413 K STREET NW, Downtown
We had trouble finding The Mirror. It’s hidden from the street, and underground. With some encouragement from my wife, I carried my newborn in his stroller down multiple flights of stairs to a dark, foreign bar. All this, in the name of journalism.
Downstairs, tucked behind a dirty mirror, is anything but a gimmick. Dim lights, a few candles, a wooden bar, potato chips. Mos Def and Dilated Peoples bumping from the speakers. The doorman warned Tessa that they play the music loud, but Colton, a champion, slept.
The bartender, Chris Chapman, a Maryland man who has worked at some of the city’s finest restaurants including Pineapple & Pearls and Toki Underground, set down a Boulevardier. This bar is known for the classics, using largely small-batch, local, handmade spirits, and Chris does them well; my drink was mostly rye, the vermouth smoothing it out.
The tour should end here — five bars is a nice, round number — but lots of these bartenders suggested one, final spot. And I couldn’t keep ignoring it.
Website; Directions
Ian, Walter and Justin sent me to Service Bar for the Mind Eraser
926-928 U STREET NW, Mount Vernon Square
At my first bar, you may remember, Ian tipped me off about Service Bar. Then, Walter called it an “industry hang-out”. Justin confirmed the Mind Eraser was “100 per cent a real thing”. If I was going to write about the cocktails that bartenders drink, I had to go here when bartenders were off their shifts: either late at night, or on a Sunday. The bar ranks as one of the 50 best in North America. Twist my arm. I chose Sunday.
Inside was low key: dollar bills on the wall, a Miller High Life neon sign, a chalk drawing of an astronaut, lemons hanging from the ceiling and a TV playing the Commanders-Cowboys game.
Bartender Decker Beasley, all bandanna and tattoos, approached me warmly with a menu, then hugged people at a table nearby. I ordered the famous cocktail — Rumple Minze peppermint schnapps and Jägermeister Cold Brew Coffee liqueur, split in equal measure and topped with soda water on crushed ice — and asked what he thinks of it.
“Honestly, I hate it,” he said, laughing. But he’ll drink one if a friend comes in. “I can overcome things that I hate for things that I love.”
I sipped the drink through a straw. It tasted like what it is: an alcoholic peppermint coffee on ice. I stopped halfway and Decker flipped his hand up, encouraging me to finish in one breath. After we were done, my head did actually feel clear.
Despite this controversial drink, Service Bar is beloved in DC for its cocktails and Decker showed me the latest series they’re working on. His favourite is the Flying Squirrel: a cognac-apple brandy-mushroom-butter drink, served like an acorn in a glass cup with a chocolate cap.
Decker has worked at Service Bar on and off for years. He credits the owners, who also run the Michelin-starred restaurant Causa, for helping him grow up. “We take you as you are,” he said. “You don’t have to shed any skin.”
When I told him about the praise the city’s other bartenders had lavished on the bar, he looked grateful. “And I would send you to theirs,” he said.
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Explore more of our DC guide here, including where chef José Andrés recommends you eat, our US art critic’s favourite artworks, and Ed Luce on how Maga has changed power dining
What are your favourite cocktail bars in DC? Tell us in the comments below. And follow us on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
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