An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

A card, just for me? Thanks!

And welcome to another edition of Bars You Must Try! Today we’re going to visit the Columbia Room, and if by today you mean February 9th, which was when I went, the first day it reopened to the public since closing in the Passenger on NYE 2014, which made me so excited I made reservations for right in the middle of what was to be our last staff meeting con call, leaving me standing in Blagden Alley taking the call and freezing my butt off before going inside to see the new joint.

The Mural is pretty, especially with JP standing in front of it

But man oh man, is it nice. I walked up the stairs, through the Punch Garden (which I believe is opening tomorrow!) and met Derek in the Spirits Library, where Alex was serving up drinks. The Library is a more casual place with drinks a la carte and a chance to try some rare liquors. But I’ll come back there in a moment.

Menu for then (not for now, ‘s different now I believe)

After Derek took my coat I was escorted into the Tasting Room. If you’d visited the Columbia Room’s previous incarnation, you knew it to be quite the intimate spot, as it was quite easy to have someone accidentally touch your intimate spots you were so close together. Now, it’s a bigger room with more seats (and cool booths behind you) and much, much more comfortable. I’d gone for the five course drinks (three drinks with food is $75, all taxes and gratuity included, and the extra two drinks costs an extra $25) because of course I did. Out came the Shoot One, a delightful riff off Coca-Cola, and away we went.

I could’ve drank it all day but it was too small to drink all day

It’s amazing how quickly two hours can go when they’re spent in an atmosphere like this, with amazing drinks like these, and with people so passionate, knowledgeable, and entertaining as JP Fetherston, Derek Brown, Adriana, and their crew. Each drink was beautiful and delicious with the accompaniments pairing perfectly with them.

I WANTED TO STEAL THIS GLASS SO BAD

(Oh, and if you’re looking at the menu, I went for the Robert Frost Cocktail despite the incredible amount of venison I’ve been eating this winter because bourbon. The presentation was AWESOME on that with charcoal on the side, I should’ve taken more pictures but I didn’t because I am not good with the picture taking as you can tell by the pictures I do manage to take.)

Pick one! I dare you! PICK ONLY ONE!

As we finished up in the Tasting Room, JP told me he wanted to buy me a drink in the Spirits Library. I walked over to the bar – it was fairly packed by this point – and perused the menu while Alex (whom you may remember from Southern Efficiency) finished up the drinks he was working on. I did my best to pick just one drink which was very difficult, but I feel that I chose well.

With the E!-V-! OH OH OH! no wait only two OHs.

Why? Because I chose the Steady Cocktail, a combination of gin, dry vermouth, Elixir Vegetal de la Grande-Chartreuse (which is g-ddamned delicious, and no, I won’t look up how to put all those accent marks into WordPress), with a garnish of three beautiful drops of extra virgin olive oil and accompanied by complimentary olives (they told me I was very pretty that day).

Oh wait I did take a picture of the Robert Frost with food

Friends, please believe me when I tell you that it was quite the wonderful drink.

The kelp water and oyster leaf gave me my veggies for the day!

I could’ve stayed in the Spirits Library and hung out all night, sipping all of the cocktails on the list until I stumbled home. But, alas, I knew I needed additional sustenance to maintain my svelte figure, so it was time to take my leave and hopefully not get as lost leaving as I did arriving.

VEP Green chartreuse + egg yolk + meyer lemon = AWESOME

If you’d like to experience the Tasting Room, you need to make reservations via their website. The other parts are open seating. Let me know if you want me to join you!

Have you been? Comment on Twitter or Facebook!

Welcome to  Bars You Must Try, the first in a series (until I get bored/forget/distracted/explode) of odes to bars that I believe it is imperative one visits soon. There’s no specific definition of what I’m looking for in the bar, just that I enjoy it, be it speakeasy or mall restaurant, dive or fancy schmancy (that is a technical term), just that it has good drinks and more importantly, good people. We’re starting off this series with Tom Brown’s Left Door, which just opened in January.

Left Door’s Front Door

It can be easy to simplify how the old Passenger/Columbia Room setup was. Columbia Room was for fancy cocktails, Passenger was not-so-fancy and a bit more simple. Especially after being there on nights like Fridays and Saturdays when it was packed to the brim with the beer and a shot crowd, it could be easy to forget that the folks there could put together some kickass classic cocktails.

After it closed, and the two joints moving to separate locations (Columbia Room is now open in Blagden Alley, and that’ll be the next installment in this series, while the Passenger will reopen later this year in Shaw), Tom Brown opened up Left Door in the Logan Circle area this January after some delays, and it is, perhaps, the essence of a classic cocktail bar.

It’s not ostentatious on the outside – you can see the front door on the left up top, it’s barely marked – but inside it’s nice and quiet. It’s like a meditation on good cocktails and tea (which it also specializes in). If there is beer on the menu (there aren’t any drafts), I haven’t even looked for them, and I’m the guy whose Twitter handle is “BeerAndAShot”.

Mick Shaking a Drink

He pulled in Mick Perrigo, who worked with Tom back at Hogo, the “dark tiki” bar that also closed in 2014. (Full disclosure: Tom and Mick are both friends of mine, and I got to bartend / pour punch there the last night, but if you read this site you know already I’m entirely biased in favor of my friends all the time and wear that on my sleeve.) Mick has been front and center when I’ve been there, along with Jason and another bartender whose name I have completely forgotten and will update with when I find out.

Part of the menu

But it’s not just all gorgeous architecture (I almost said scenery but didn’t want Mick to know I was talking about him) and vintage barware. One of the standouts is the classic liquor collection – and it’s not just old, delicious, and yes, expensive as shit liquor but you can get drinks made with them. Want to see what a $100 cocktail tastes like? Just pony up the cash.

(I am constantly tempted just to say I’ve done it. Then I remember my credit card bill.)

Tom has a deep love for spirits like those. He took a few of us through a tour of a number of them a couple of years ago including the Black Tot rum, old whiskeys, and enough other things that I Irish goodbye-ed without paying either of two tabs I had running (and boy oh boy did I feel guilty for WEEKS about that).

I didn’t write down the name of this drink but it was delicious.

A bit more about the space: it’s a quiet, well decorated spot on the second floor of the building. The middle part is mostly the bar, and by the windows there’s several seats and such for small groups to gather. I think it’s pretty beautiful, but do keep in mind it is not large, nor do they even have a kitchen (they do have some snacks on the menu). Personally, I like to go before dinner, because if I have a couple of cocktails I’ll often forget to have dinner unless Marshall is there to kick me in the nuts.

Ignore the sketchy guy in the mirror

Oh, for the quiet meditation of the adult cocktail bar. Guess I need to go there again, like probably Thursday.

If you’ve been, feel free to share your thoughts with us on Twitter or our Facebook page!

–  SeanMike

One time, for a first date, we met at The Passenger for brunch on a Sunday. She showed up straight from a run (unchanged, unshowered), fell asleep eating, and then said she didn’t feel a spark on our date.

I liked going there for dates because the dates were usually terrible and Alex, Julia, Jade, and K. Clare would help me figure out how it went (wrong).

I’ve never really had a date or a girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. A few years ago I was dating someone over Valentine’s Day, but she was in Kentucky for the holiday and didn’t like flowers. That’s why we broke up, in the end, I tried to send her flowers, they called her cell phone for delivery (which she hadn’t turned off during a meeting), and she called me up screaming at me to dump me.

Let me get your jacket for you…

Back in October, I got an email about a Canadian whisky called Pendleton Midnight. I said, why, yes, I would like some, and they said, sure, here you go. I got the box for it and put it on my coffee table and let it box age* ( * – not a thing) until, uhhh, last night.

But then the other day they told me about a cocktail competition they’re hosting and I was like, oh, I should try this whisky. And write about it, obvs. And take pictures of it because PR/marketing folks are always like “we have hi-res images” and I’m always like “ha I got a cell phone and shaky hands” which is WAY realer than hi-res promo images, right?

(That competition: it’s open to everybody! One winner per month, through June, and you might get a chance to go to their final competition and win cash and prizes. I like contests that are open to everybody. And once a month, hey guys, that’s, uh, a couple of chances? How far away is June? It’s so cold. I don’t know anymore.)

So I finally cracked her open and … wow. That’s some damn good whisky.

That’s a nice outfit you’re wearing

It’s rich, smooth, and delicious. They have tasting notes in the booklet that came with it, but I’ll put it this way: I don’t know if I’ve had another Canadian whisky with the depth of flavor I got out of this one.

It also came with some cocktail recipes, which normally I laugh at and throw away. I did the same thing here, but laughing in a good way: they’re three recipes. A Manhattan and an Old Fashioned are both listed, made in the proper ratios (IMHO) of 2-1 for the Manhattan and just a bit of sugar and bitters with the whisky in the Old Fashioned. The third is just two ounces, neat.

Let’s get you out of that dress

Pendleton is imported from Canada and bottled by Hood River in Oregon. Some Googling didn’t lead me to know who distills it in Canada (not that it really matters, to be honest, as they’re not claiming to distill it themselves – I just like to know). But with all that branding and such, it boils down to that it’s a smooth, delicious whisky even neat at 90 proof.

Oh, you look good like that

That’s why this year my date for Valentine’s Day will be Pendleton Midnight Whisky. Unlike that time I went to Estadio on a date and she told me that she was going to start a website calling out servers and bartenders by name and establishment if she didn’t get good enough service, I will probably instead drink it alone. Like the aftermath of so many bad dates, it’ll probably end the same, with me entirely too drunk, helping to donate to charity, then sleeping alone. But hey, sometimes that’s all a guy needs on a Valentine’s Day night.

I’m way overdue for a post myself, and so here’s a quick one to help out folks (since I saw a request about this today).

When you’re stocking a home bar from scratch, some folks will immediately think “I need one of everything”.

And hey, if you have the budget for it, go for it! It’s not like (most) liquor goes bad (though it may lose some flavor). But other ingredients do go bad, and you might not have an unlimited budget.

As I’ve been told, and I agree with completely, the best way is to buy the ingredients you need for your favorite drink. For instance, if you want to make negronis at home, you’d buy Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth. Then, maybe look for related drinks – oh, hey, if I add in rye, I can do rye Manhattans and Old Pals. It’s all up to what you like.

From that, I’ll give some ideas of what I’d look for in liquors, prices based on Virginia ABC unless otherwise marked. (For instance, you can get most of these cheaper in DC, but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically cheaper – you have to go to the right places, etc. etc.)

Bourbon – For a mixing bourbon, I like to go with Four Roses yellow label ($18.99). The Four Roses higher end bourbons are also good deals (Small batch, $37.99, Single Barrel $41.99). For one with more spice, I go Bulleit ($32.99).

Rye – For mixing and shots, I tend to stick to Old Overholt ($21.99) though some like the extra punch of Rittenhouse 100 (a few bucks more, evidently not in VA anymore) – but it seems to have changed recipes recently maybe. Higher end, the High West Rendezvous ($69.99) is nice, as is their other stuff. I’d also look at the E.H. Taylor or Russell’s Reserve (both $59.99), or if you want something local, the Catoctin Creek Roundstone Rye 92 proof ($52.79).

Gin – In my opinion, you need two kinds of gin: a London dry, and Plymouth. The former can easily be done by a number of brands, typically around $20, such as Bombay (*not* Sapphire!), Beefeater (my fave for martinis), Tanqueray, etc. The latter is one brand, Plymouth ($39.99), and has a lighter taste. Past there, you really run into “what are your preferences” as not many folks drink gin neat. A lot of folks like Hendriks for the cucumber/etc. taste ($39.99) and it makes a nice change in gin and tonics or in a collins. I also like Aviation ($25.99). Bols Genever ($41.99) is an older form of gin that’s quite good, and Hayman’s Royal Dock Navy Strength (not available in Virginia,  ~$38).

Vodka – Ugh, this topic can be contentious. I tend to stick with Tito’s ($21.99) as a go-to. Other than that, ¯_(?)_/¯

Brandy – Remember this covers a ton of subkinds, including cognac, armagnac, calvados, etc. I tend to have some Hennessy VS ($36.99) around or something of equivalent for mixing or sipping, but I’m not hugely knowledgeable on them. (I will try to edit this later to reflect what I might have at home).

Scotch – I like Black Bottle ($27.29) for mixing. Beyond that you’re hitting a HUGE different field, so I’d hit up Jack Rose Dining Saloon or some other good whiskey bars for advice.

Bitters – A bottle of Peychauds ($4.89), Angostura (~$10 in grocery stores or the District), and Regans Orange (~$10, I think).

Other liqueurs – These will vary by what you make. If you’re not making sidecars or margaritas do you really need that curacao/Cointreau? Bitter liqueurs can be a whole lecture on their own. Fernet Branca ($28.99) is quite popular with many cocktail geeks.

Vermouth – I tend to go with the Dolin brand (~$12 in the District), especially if you can get the 375s (as vermouth is made from wine, and needs to be refrigerated and can go “off”). Carpano Antica sweet ($35.99) is popular and good.

So that’s most of it to begin — got thoughts on it? Tweet me or us about it!