SPEAKEASY HIDDEN BAR FREE

You better believe the wine list is well curated. For the elevated experience, head to Au Petit Bouchon, where Bordeaux-born chef Mark Courseille serves refined French dishes. At happy hour, on Fridays, you'll have a chance to rub elbows with diplomats and practice your French with a $4 beer in hand. Once you pass a security check, you and up to three guests can visit the embassy's eateries, including Cafe Descartes, a casual bar with a small seating area and foosball table.

SPEAKEASY HIDDEN BAR FREE

Start by filling out an application online and submitting a photo for a free membership card. In a true act of diplomacy, the French Embassy offers the public access to its bar, cafeteria and fine-dining restaurant - but, like getting a passport, you have to jump through a few hoops.

The food menu includes seafood-heavy small plates, while the classic-leaning cocktails include a daiquiri ($13) and a brown-butter old-fashioned ($16). The bar, decorated with lobster cages, oars and a ship's wheel, is named after a seafarer who supposedly invented the hole in doughnuts. If there's room - only 25 guests are allowed at a time - you'll be admitted through a false door. But if you're in the shop and spot a raised whiskey flag, give it a pull: The flag acts like a doorbell, ringing a bell on the other side. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)įrom the same team as Nocturne and also housed within a Sugar Shack, this nautical-themed bar requires an online reservation as well. Have fun, if you can get in.īartender Megan Kyker opens the door leading from Sugar Shack, a low-key doughnut shop in Alexandria, into Captain Gregory's. In another category still are the places so mysterious, few are even aware they exist.įor those looking for an adventure, hunt down these hidden spots, ranked easiest to access to most difficult. Then there are real clandestine bars - ones that require an invitation from someone in the know. Several calling themselves speakeasies have sprung up across Washington over the past few years, only to reveal themselves as merely retro bars that anyone can get into. That’s when he points them toward a walk-in refrigerator door in the back, where a watering hole is tucked away in plain sight. 'They'll come in looking lost,' says Koch, a managing partner at the 14th Street newcomer Chicken + Whiskey. Charles Koch can always tell when it’s someone’s first time inside his restaurant.Ī friend probably told them to swing by for a drink, but all they see is a fast-casual eatery with a food menu that's suspiciously lacking in cocktails.

Speakeasy hidden bar