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Washington Post
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Tasting menus and expletives: When fine dining meets hip-hop
When C.L. Stallworth and Thandi Myeni walked into Jônt, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Washington that costs $375 a person, they were giddy with anticipation. They had wanted to eat there for months, ever since having such a wonderful experience at Bresca, chef-owner Ryan Ratino's less-expensive sister restaurant downstairs. They couldn't wait to taste what Ratino and team had in store: a wood-fired take on Japanese cuisine using European techniques, served at a tasting counter. Less than five minutes into the May 2022 meal, the couple, who are Black, heard a rap song using the n-word and 'bitch' blasting through the restaurant's sound system. Stallworth, then a Connecticut state representative, thought it was an accident — until a second song used similar language. Almost three years later, Stallworth is still upset about the experience. 'I just felt like, 'This is not happening, not in this restaurant,'' said Stallworth, 60, senior pastor at East End Baptist Tabernacle Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut. 'It was expensive. It's like, I just paid for a bunch of racism. Maybe that was not his intent, but to me, it was very insulting and degrading.' They're not the only diners who have objected to Jônt's music over the years. The restaurant's Yelp and OpenTable reviews include frequent references to the hip-hop soundtrack, from some customers who appreciate it and others who don't. In one Yelp review, a diner complained about 'the blaring and cringe-worthy music that filled the restaurant — a cacophony of bad rap with offensive lyrics.' On OpenTable, one wrote that 'sitting through a 3 hour meal with hip hop blaring in the background was audibly painful.' Restaurants at virtually every price point all over the United States, owned by people of many races and ethnicities, are playing hip-hop music with explicit lyrics in their dining rooms. Some restaurateurs say the genre's widespread popularity makes it fair game for playlists, no matter the lyrics, while some prefer clean versions of the songs. Some diners, particularly younger ones, say they appreciate the energetic vibe the music creates, but others find it yet another example of how restaurants are simply too loud. In some cases, the race or age of a restaurant's owner — or of its customers — affects the calculation about what to play and how to respond if diners complain. After they heard the second explicit song at Jônt, Stallworth and Myeni complained to a server about the lyrics. They asked whether this was the music for the night and whether it could be turned down. The server walked away, then returned and told the couple that the music was from the chef's playlist. Ratino, who is White, was working there that night but never talked to the couple about the music, Myeni said. Why didn't they leave? Stallworth said they assumed the music that offended them wouldn't last for the entire three-hour meal, but it did. Ratino declined to speak to The Washington Post for this story. More than a year after Stallworth and Myeni's complaints, Jônt began playing pop, R&B and clean versions of rap songs. Recently, though, Ratino has resumed playing hip-hop with explicit lyrics at Ômo by Jônt, which he opened in Florida in March 2024 and which recently landed in the Michelin Guide. As a Black cultural art form, hip-hop developed out of abject poverty and pain almost 52 years ago in the South Bronx, part of New York City's poorest borough. Once underground and stigmatized as dangerous and rebellious, hip-hop has exploded into a multibillion-dollar global industry. In 2017, hip-hop/R&B became the dominant music genre in the United States, surpassing rock for the first time, according to Nielsen's U.S. music year-end report. Carlton Harrison, professor of business, hip-hop and sports at the University of Central Florida, isn't surprised to see so many restaurants embracing the music: If they don't, they run the risk of seeming culturally irrelevant. While the hip-hop industry is mostly Black, he said, more than 70 percent of its consumers are White. The genre's move to the mainstream is a positive thing, Harrison said, but, as a consequence, the genre has helped the world get too comfortable with the n-word. 'I'm not pointing the fingers at the restaurant owners,' he said. 'They're just mimicking what everyone does.' Whether it's hip-hop or another genre, music is just as crucial to creating restaurant ambiance as lighting and paint color, said Alec DeRuggiero, head music supervisor of Gray V, a New York-based company that crafts playlists for restaurants and other businesses. Gray V's consultants advise clients not to play music that contains explicit or potentially offensive content. Playlists that include such lyrics usually stem from people who are 'typically compiling music that they personally enjoy, have a nostalgic connection to or that's currently trending, without considering the full context of a public dining space,' he said. Indeed, restaurateurs who play explicit hip-hop cite their personal connection to it. Michael Beltran, owner of the Michelin-starred Ariete in Miami's affluent Coconut Grove neighborhood, grew up listening to 1980s and '90s hip-hop from Nas, Jay-Z, DMX, Rakim and A Tribe Called Quest. He began to appreciate the music even more after learning about the blues, funk and soul that birthed it. On a recent visit to Ariete, song lyrics got lost in the timbre of the open kitchen and the chatter of guests. But using the Shazam app to identify the music, a Post reporter found that several songs using the n-word were played. One, 'Buck Em Down' by Black Moon, uses the word 20 times and glorifies drug use and gun violence. 'I always tell people, like, when they're dining at Ariete, it's like hanging out with me in my living room, you know, and I want it to feel very homey, and I want it to feel very cool,' said Beltran, 39, who is White Cuban American. 'It's always dimly lit, it's pretty dark, actually, the music is loud, and the music is pretty aggressive, because it's the music I grew up with.' Similarly, Justin Pichetrungsi, 38, wants his Los Angeles restaurant, Anajak Thai, to reflect his identity and the environment that shaped him as an L.A. native. The restaurant was one of the first to serve Thai food in the San Fernando Valley when his Thai immigrant parents opened it in 1981, he says. And they played classical and smooth jazz music for a predominantly White clientele, which their son sees as an example of their attempts to assimilate. 'Accommodation and compromise become the theme of adaptation and survival,' he says. Once he took over in 2019, the chef-owner stopped delineating spice levels and revamped the menu. He also pumped up the volume and energy of the music with the help of his girlfriend, Kelsey Lee, 32, who is of Japanese, Chinese and Native Hawaiian descent and curates the playlists. They added country, Taiwanese pop, Mexican ballads and unedited rap music from West Coast rappers such as Snoop Dogg, Warren G, DJ Quik and Dr. Dre. His efforts have drawn a diverse clientele of families, young professionals, athletes, and such celebrities as John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, R&B singer Raphael Saadiq, and rapper Action Bronson. In 2023, the James Beard Foundation named Pichetrungsi California's best chef. Stallworth and Myeni said they cannot recall the names of the artists or songs they heard during their Jônt dinner, which cost between $900 and $1,000. But 'Jont1,' the restaurant's 326-song playlist on Spotify, was composed mostly of hardcore rap songs that use explicit language. It is no longer visible on Spotify. At 34, Ratino is one of the youngest chefs in the U.S. to head a two-Michelin-star restaurant. In 2023, the Michelin Guide Washington, D.C., gave him its Young Chef Award. In her Yelp review, Myeni questioned whether Jônt would have earned any Michelin stars if it had played music with antisemitic or antigay slurs. It seems to her that society has a higher tolerance for racial epithets about Black people. 'It's one thing when I'm in the club, but it's a completely different matter when I'm paying hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars,' Myeni told The Post. 'I'm not trying to eat foie gras and hear 'bitch.'' Some of the complaints at restaurants that play explicit music seem to reflect a generation gap. The Michelin star that Ariete earned in 2022, for instance, drew older customers who didn't appreciate hip-hop, Beltran said. They've never complained about the lyrics, he said, but when they ask for the music to be turned down, staff members know to say that the music is programmed into a system they can't change and that, at a certain time, it'll turn off. If the guest presses the issue, Beltran tells them they aren't the only person in the room. Beltran, who builds the playlists himself, takes it in stride when customers threaten to report him to the Michelin Guide over the music. 'I was like, 'Cool, obviously they know because they've been here,'' he said, referring to Michelin inspectors. 'So, if this is like a threat or an empty threat or whatever it is, I'm not scared to be who I am.' The anonymous chief inspector for the Michelin Guide North America told The Post that the guide evaluates restaurants solely on the cuisine. In an email, the inspector said that the text of each review also aims to provide diners 'with a sense of the ambiance.' But in its write-ups of four restaurants in this story, the Michelin guide doesn't include any specifics about the music beyond mentions of Jônt's 'high-energy playlist' and Anajak Thai's 'singularly buzzy atmosphere.' At Anajak Thai, chef-owner Pichetrungsi remembers an older White couple complaining that a fancy French restaurant would never play such loud, explicit hip-hop music. He remembers thinking to himself that, obviously, the customers should go eat at a fancy French restaurant. Many other older customers, most of them White, have also taken exception to the loud rap, telling Pichetrungsi to 'turn your Black music down' and to play Thai music. 'They really did not shy away from telling me their true feelings, and I took these as, well, I don't want to serve racists,' Pichetrungsi said. Some restaurateurs adjust their music based on the age and race of their clientele. Monique Rose Sneed, owner of the Bodega on Main in College Park, Georgia, says she would never have played hip-hop with the n-word to a room of White diners because, in her view, it's not what they should be listening to. But Sneed, who is Black, served mostly young Black customers (including influencer Keith Lee) before closing her fast-casual sandwich shop last summer and moving it to a takeout-only ghost kitchen. She played New York hip-hop because her restaurant and decor were mirrored after the genre's birthplace; most of her staff is Black and from Brooklyn or the Bronx. And some of the songs played in the restaurant used explicit lyrics. During the daytime hours, she blocked songs on Pandora that she considered inappropriate for children and older adults, such as 'WAP' by Cardi B and others with sexually explicit lyrics, reserving such songs for Saturday evenings, when more adults were in the room. 'If it's a Sunday brunch and people are coming in after church,' she said, 'it's not appropriate.' Sneed, 45, said she didn't receive any complaints about the music. Still, the way she sees it, just because she played some songs with the n-word doesn't give White people license to do the same. 'The intention behind it is different. The meaning behind it is different, in my opinion,' she said. 'We could argue that amongst each other, 'Should we be using the word?' We can continue to have that debate and that conversation, because there is power in words, but I still never will believe that just because I say it gives a White person the right to say it, too.' What if the clientele is particularly diverse? Beltran said Miami's Ariete attracts mostly Hispanic people but also Black diners, White diners and people of Asian descent, mostly between the ages of 30 and 70. Beltran said he 'never really thought about' what he would do if a Black customer complained about hearing the n-word, but would probably change the music. 'I think that I would assume that hip-hop is also obviously not their thing if they are offended by a song saying that because, in hip-hop, it's pretty common,' he said. In Columbia, Missouri, it was a Black customer's complaint that eventually led to a social media firestorm around a tiny fast-casual restaurant in 2020. Mahlik Good, now 25, found the music at Beet Box — including the unedited version of 'A Lot,' a 2018 song by 21 Savage — especially egregious for two reasons: First, Americans were still reeling from George Floyd's murder at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Second, Good was the only Black customer there. 'I don't remember exactly how many times I heard the n-word, but it felt out of place, especially given the clientele in that place,' Good told The Post. Good said that, in a phone conversation with co-owner Benjamin Hamrah, who is Persian American, Hamrah refused to stop playing songs with the n-word at the restaurant. Hamrah did not respond to repeated requests from The Post for an interview or to a list of questions via email. Then, Hamrah, 41, posted a parental advisory statement on Beet Box's Instagram in which he told customers to 'enter at your own aural risk.' The backlash was fierce. Some commenters found the message insensitive, while others pointed out Beet Box's social media silence following Floyd's murder, about a month before Good's visit. Four days later, Hamrah posted a lengthy apology on Instagram incorporating some of Good's feedback. Hamrah promised to hold a virtual town hall with the local Black community and to join a seven-week course on fighting inequity. And at some point, he changed the music. When a Post reporter visited Beet Box in August, it was playing mostly upbeat pop music at a lower volume about dreams, dancing, breakups and the like, with no explicit lyrics. Days after his dinner at Jônt, Stallworth mailed and emailed Ratino on his Connecticut state legislature letterhead. He praised the cuisine and staff but said the music triggered him by taking him back to 1970s Alabama and the first time he was called the n-word, by a White man when he was 10 years old. Ratino never responded, Stallworth said, calling it 'like insult to injury.' Myeni, Stallworth's then-girlfriend, also emailed Jônt with her concerns, and, in a reply that Myeni shared with The Post, a staff member said that she was sorry to hear about Myeni's experience and that staff didn't realize how the playlist affected her dinner. The staff member, whose name was cut off in the screenshots Myeni shared, added that the team cultivated the playlist out of appreciation for the music and the artists and said that, although they are often complimented for it, they are also criticized. Myeni's thoughtful message 'has provided some necessary and fresh perspective,' the staff member said, and would be taken very seriously. 'Your reaction is understanding, considering how provocative the language may be, especially when you hear such a loaded word as that one in particular,' the message said, referring to Myeni's complaint about hearing the n-word. 'We are a youthful team and often toe the line of experimentation and risqué content. Perhaps we may have naively gone too far.' Years later, the restaurant group has apparently opted again to play similar music. At Ômo by Jônt in Winter Park, about three miles from downtown Orlando, a bite of wagyu came with a side of 'Ric Flair Drip' by Offset and Metro Boomin, a song that uses the n-word 11 times, the word 'bitch' four times and orders a woman to 'show the t--s.' In her 2022 review of Jônt, Washingtonian food critic Ann Limpert, who is White, took issue with the loud '90s hip-hop. 'For a place that feels so trend-conscious and forward-thinking, hearing 'I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one' while I nibbled on a superlative Japanese-style custard felt like a dated movie—a relic of the bro-kitchen trend of the early, pre-#MeToo aughts,' Limpert wrote. Longtime Post food critic Tom Sietsema, who is also White, wrote in 2021 that Jônt's 'louder-than-necessary' soundtrack had music with lyrics that 'can be offensive.' Still, plenty of customers have expressed appreciation for the restaurant's soundtrack. Tim Larkins, 44, of Vienna, Virginia, dined there in 2021 with his wife, Danielle, for their 14th wedding anniversary, and he remembers hearing familiar 1990s hip-hop songs from the Notorious B.I.G., Nas and Wu-Tang Clan that used the n-word and explicit lyrics. He said he understands why the lyrics would have upset others, but, for him, the music created a fun, welcoming atmosphere that kept the energy going. 'When you're in a place like this and you trust the chef to create the best experience possible for you given their skill set, you have to put yourself in their hands and let them run with it,' said Larkins, who is White. When he ate there in spring 2023, James Durham, 43, of Chicago said he vibed with a couple of Jônt chefs who were essentially dancing to the music while they worked. The tunes made him feel welcome as the only Black man dining there that night. 'Middle Child' by J. Cole and 'Omertà' by Drake contain the n-word and explicit lyrics, but Durham was so focused on the novelty of hearing hip-hop at a two-Michelin-star restaurant that he didn't notice. 'You're eating this amazing food, you're hearing this great music,' Durham said. 'It was orgasmic, because it was just two things at once.' While he understands — up to a point — why the lyrics might bother other customers, he doesn't have a problem with them. 'You're at a restaurant's peril as far as their soundtrack goes,' Durham said. 'You can't control what music they play, and, in the same vein, would someone be offended if they were playing Mozart … and say, 'Oh my God, they played this extremely boring music with this extremely expensive meal?'' Emily Heil in D.C., Carlos Frías in Florida and Kathy Love in Missouri contributed to this report.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
In Better Spirits
WASHINGTON, D.C.—It's a weird time to live in the nation's capital. Well, at least a weirder time than usual. Concentrating America's political industry along a small stretch of the Potomac was always bound to create an odd culture—young, highly transient, hypereducated, and vocationally obsessive. But the whiplash of a new presidential administration, heightened by the culling of the city's federal workforce, has created a particularly uncertain—and noticeably tense—atmosphere among resident Washingtonians. Maybe that tension is why the city's growing collection of high-end cocktail bars are packed every night. Or, maybe it's just because they're so damn good. Take Press Club. In a subterranean space beneath Dupont Circle, vinyl records spin behind a wooden bar adorned with minimalist glassware and vintage brandies. Cocktails like the French Waltz—a daiquiri made with Chartreuse, pisco, and riesling—and the White Ferrari—a tequila and mezcal take on the Vesper—draw inspiration from the records and tracks that fill the room. Once you've settled at the bar, the world outside disappears, leaving only you, your drink, and the people around you as you talk, taste, and listen your way through the night. Press Club, which debuted in November, is the latest in a series of high-profile cocktail bar openings in the nation's capital and one of the brightest jewels in the city's ever-growing culinary crown. The District, once trapped under the brutal oppression of spendy steakhouses geared toward company cards and expense accounts, is on the cultural rise—and its cocktail community is in the vanguard. Press Club isn't the only world-class cocktail bar leading D.C.'s culinary ascendency, but it's certainly one of the best. You would expect as much, given its pedigree. The bar's founding partners, Will Patton and Devin Kennedy, boast as impressive a resume as anyone in America's cocktail community. Patton, a native of Alexandria, Virginia, has spent the past half decade curating the beverage programs at Hive Hospitality's Jônt and Bresca, two of Washington's premier Michelin-starred restaurants. Kennedy, though a D.C. native, cut his teeth in New York's ultra-competitive craft cocktail community, serving as a bar director and sommelier at several high-end restaurants before a three-year stint at the cult hit cocktail bar Pouring Ribbons. Patton and Kennedy have been friends—and rivals—for years. Though they never faced each other directly, they regularly crossed paths while in the same cocktail competition circuits. 'We developed this healthy rivalry,' Patton told me. 'Well, a relatively healthy rivalry.' When, following the pandemic, Hive moved to open a standalone cocktail bar in D.C., Patton convinced Kennedy to come on board. 'We both have the same goals,' Kennedy explained. 'If we're going to do this, we're going to do it. We're not going to just open a bar, we're going to try to be the best.' While cocktails are one of America's original culinary traditions, cresting into a golden age during the turn of the 20th century, the country's mixology culture was snuffed out by Prohibition. America's top bartending minds fled abroad, key ingredients disappeared, and recipes were forgotten. Even after Prohibition's repeal, American bars languished for decades under the boot of sour mixes, Long Island iced teas, and vodka sodas. But in the mid-1990s, led by the now-legendary Dale DeGroff—nicknamed 'King Cocktail'—a small group of ambitious bartenders rediscovered, and reclaimed, the country's libatious tradition, sparking mixology revivals in cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Washington's craft cocktail scene lagged behind its larger rivals in those early days. But the community has since grown rapidly, mirroring the growth of D.C.'s culinary and arts communities and turning the city into a standout destination in international mixology. Today, there are more than a dozen high-caliber cocktail bars scattered across the District, some of which rival top bars in havens like New York, London, and Tokyo. Washington still isn't the top cocktail destination in America, but it certainly punches above its weight, maybe more than any other city in the world—depending on who you ask. The cool-ification of the nation's capital is a symptom of America's broader urban revival and is indicative of shifting demographics and changing expectations among its young and affluent residents. Hip coffee shops, Michelin quality dining, and cocktails that don't suck are no longer a pipe dream for Hill staffers wondering why they didn't just take that job in New York—they're an everpresence, and an expectation. But high-end craft cocktail bars like Press Club couldn't have existed two decades ago. Even in the recent past, you would have struggled to find a bartender in the city who knew how to make the most basic classic cocktail, let alone a bar that squeezed fresh citrus or knew to refrigerate its vermouth. But today, the city's cocktail bars are packed with well-informed patrons clamoring to drop $20 on everything from a classic Manhattan to avant-garde concoctions derived from laboratory centrifuges and rotary evaporators. The city's cocktail renaissance came about through the efforts of a small and dedicated group of bartenders, restaurateurs, and mixology nerds who worked deliberately—and often zealously—to build the foundations that D.C. would need to become a serious player in the global cocktail renaissance. Here are (some of) the people who made it happen. Derek Brown's career started with a lie. A D.C. native, Brown had been picking up shifts as a server at Rocky's Cafe in Adams Morgan when one day the owner asked if he knew how to bartend. 'And I said yes,' Brown told me. 'I was lying.' Luckily for Brown, knowing how to make cocktails was not actually a prerequisite to tending bar at the time. But Brown's interest in mixology grew, and when Rocky's closed in 2003, he moved to Frank Ruta's Palena and delved into the cocktail history books and forums that were then driving New York's mixology revival. Brown and a friend even started DC Drinks, a self-indulgent—and at times fanatical—cocktail blog of their own. 'Honestly, we got super nerdy about it. We tried to learn everything we could, and then bring those things to light,' Brown said. By then, a small community of mixology nerds was coalescing across the nation's capital, drawn out by the same blogs, books, and bartenders that inspired Brown. However, D.C.'s cocktail community was still centered around restaurants and the individual bartenders who worked at them. 'It was always about whether the bartender cared about cocktails and less about the entire bar,' Chantal Tseng, who was then developing a cocktail program at the Tabard Inn in Dupont Circle, told me. 'You had to find the one bartender who worked on the one day, versus going to a place knowing 'Oh, they've got great cocktails there.'' Dan Searing was another bartender who cared. 'I was a fan of the literature and culture of the 1920s and 1930s,' Searing told me. 'I romanticized that time period, and I was fascinated by the fact that some of that culture that was so widespread then had disappeared.' One aspect of that vanished culture was the cocktails—like the Gin Rickey and Green Isaac's Special—that writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald elevated in their stories. 'I knew that I was never going to have a drink with Fitzgerald or Hemingway,' Searing said. 'But I knew that I could drink things that they had drunk or written about.' Searing's parents were part-time antiques dealers, and through them he got hold of pre-Prohibition cocktail manuals. The recipes fascinated him, and when Searing found himself manning the bar at Temperance Hall in January 2006—a Prohibition-themed haunt in D.C.'s Petworth neighborhood—he convinced the owner to add several cocktails to the menu. 'I was serving sidecars and Manhattans and things like that, very basic cocktails,' Searing recalled. 'But in 2006, that was kind of a novelty.' But D.C.'s growing cocktail community was fragmented and lacked the organization of larger cities. 'You're talking about like 10 or 12 people who are doing this all over the city,' Owen Thompson, then-manager of a whiskey bar in Adams Morgan called Bourbon, told me. 'You couldn't just walk into a bar and say, 'Hey, let me get an old-fashioned.' They would stare at you, like, 'What the f–k are you talking about?'' In New York City, up-and-coming bartenders had a selection of leading bars at which to train, but that infrastructure wasn't yet in place in Washington. 'Unlike in New York, there wasn't a bastion for everyone to go learn together. There wasn't that one seminal cocktail bar where we all could start as apprentices,' Kevin Rogers, a Georgetown Law graduate who, in 2004, left his law career to pursue hospitality, told me. 'We were individuals who were all on our own path, seeking this Holy Grail.' But in 2007, alongside EatBar's Gina Chersevani, Brown decided the growing community needed formal organization. Inspired by independent guilds in the Pacific Northwest, they founded the D.C. Craft Bartenders Guild with 10 original members. The duo invited Rogers, Searing, Tseng, and Thompson along with Justin Guthrie, Kat Bangs, Adam Bernbach, and Tom Brown. Derek Brown The guild's formation was the spark that D.C.'s cocktail scene needed. 'The guild accelerated things considerably, because suddenly there was a community of people who could bounce ideas off of each other and share our interests and follow each other's bar programs,' Searing told me. 'It challenged us to take ourselves more seriously.' Together the guild organized events like the Repeal Day ball—an annual celebration of the anniversary of Prohibition's repeal. It also sponsored a yearly competition where bartenders would face off to create the best version of a Rickey, a cocktail invented in pre-Prohibition D.C. that, in 2011, the guild successfully lobbied to have named the city's official cocktail. The next step for some guild members came in New York. In 2005, 'King Cocktail' Dale DeGroff and several other industry veterans launched B.A.R., a five-day mixology intensive held once per year described by Brown as 'the Harvard of bartending schools.' In 2008, Brown, Guthrie, and Rogers trekked to New York for the course. 'I walked in the room and I saw [Brown and Guthrie],' Rogers recalled. 'I was like, 'Okay, D.C. is trying to make a move here.'' D.C.'s bartenders were no longer comfortable playing second fiddle to those in New York or San Francisco. 'We came back from that program really energized,' Brown said. 'Not only did we go to that program and learn all day, but in the evening, we went to all these great bars.' Back in D.C., Brown and Guthrie conspired with Thompson to open D.C.'s first modern speakeasy, and on Sunday and Monday nights, the three were soon converting the second floor of Bourbon into a secretive bar called Hummingbird to Mars—inspired by an architect of Prohibition's famous remark that there was as much chance of repealing Prohibition as there was for a humming bird to fly to Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. For the three, making drinks the right way—served up or down, straight up or on the rocks, garnished or ungarnished—was no longer a question of adiaphora, it was important and obligatory, an extension of the zealousness of America's early cocktail revivalists. Hummingbird to Mars would be the first vehicle in D.C. for that uncompromising pursuit of excellence. 'We would take everything down and put it all up. And then we would hand carve our own ice, and use our own ingredients and tinctures,' Brown explained. The speakeasy even had rules: If you were able to secure a reservation, you couldn't share its location, couldn't take photographs of it, couldn't use a cellphone inside it, and, most importantly, you couldn't write about it. 'It was all pretentious bulls–t,' Brown recalled. 'But I think anytime that you're trying to restart something that has been dead for 100 years, it takes a lot of energy, and it takes a lot of fanaticism, and we were a little bit fanatic.' But people did talk, and someone did write. On October 1, 2008, Washington Post columnist Jason Wilson let the secret out, writing about Hummingbird in the paper's food section. 'We were pissed, we closed it down,' Brown recalled. But Wilson's loose pen was only an excuse. 'To be honest, we also closed it down because it was a lot of work,' Brown said. 'It was like 10 hours' worth of setup to make no money,' Thompson recalled. Hummingbird's legacy, however, endured. Inspired by the speakeasy, two local hospitality entrepreneurs opened The Gibson a month later on D.C.'s lively U Street, tapping Brown to design its first cocktail menu. 'That was the beginning of a lot of things. There were already really great bartenders and really great bars making really great cocktails in D.C., but nothing quite like that,' Brown said. 'So that kind of helped to propel what I was doing, and kind of galvanized the community.' When Brown, Guthrie, and Rogers arrived at B.A.R., they initially thought they were the only D.C. bartenders in the room. They weren't. Back in D.C., two restaurateurs were preparing to open Founding Farmers, an ambitious Southern restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, and they had sent their beverage director, John Arroyo, to B.A.R. in preparation. Arroyo wanted to serve well-made classic cocktails at the restaurant, but at a volume and pace beyond that of a candle-lit speakeasy. 'And I laugh like, 'you're out of your mind,'' Rogers recalled. But Rogers remained friends with Arroyo, and after Founding Farmers opened several months later, he joined the team. The restaurant was a resounding success, and its cocktail program, to Rogers' surprise, succeeded with it. 'I can't believe what we were trying to do,' Rogers said. Making one or two cocktails at a time in a small bar was one thing, but the logistics, training, consistency, and prep necessary to serve a long menu of cocktails in a bustling restaurant was another. 'They were the first people that were doing high volume cocktails at a high level,' Kennedy told me. Yet the team kept up with heavy demand, and proved that there was a broader audience for classic cocktails in the city. 'The thing that was impressive was the number of people that were ordering this stuff like, we couldn't believe it,' Rogers said. 'We were making these drinks that were coming from The Joy of Mixology or coming from DeGroff and being rediscovered. But now we're making them for the everyday public at a high rate of speed.' Brown soon moved to open a bar of his own—one that would put Washington on the cocktail map. In November 2009, Brown and his brother Tom opened the Passenger, a laid-back joint near Mt. Vernon Square. While Tom ran the casual front bar, Brown would mix sophisticated drinks at the Columbia Room, a small 10-seat cocktail bar tucked in the back. The Columbia Room quickly gained recognition for its avant-garde cocktail program, and in 2016 moved to a larger home in Blagden Alley. In the interim, Brown's cocktail empire, under the ownership umbrella of Drink Company LLC, had grown substantially. In 2013, Brown and Drink Company opened three additional bars—sherry bar Mockingbird Hill, whiskey bar Southern Efficiency, and oyster bar Eat the Rich—at adjacent locations in Shaw that would eventually host a rotating cast of pop-ups themed on everything from Christmas to Game of Thrones. 'They were really the tip of the spear, and they never got enough credit for it,' Deke Dunne, beverage director at the cocktail bar Allegory, and a bartender with Brown's Drink Company at the time, told me. 'They were doing stuff that I don't even see people doing today.' In 2017, the recognition came. Columbia Room won Best American Cocktail Bar at the Spirited Awards—the Oscars of bartending—and was named a finalist for Best American Bar Team. Washington had finally put itself on the map, and it intended to stay. For D.C's craft cocktail community, the Columbia Room's success opened the doors for others to pursue similar heights. 'When you look at any human achievement, there's this massive mental barrier until somebody smashes through that ceiling,' Dunne told me. 'And for us, Columbia Room smashed that ceiling.' Brown, however, wouldn't be part of the D.C.'s continued push. Recognizing that life in the industry was challenging both his physical and mental health, Brown stepped back from his responsibilities at the Columbia Room, and eventually shuttered the bar in early 2022. Allegory. Deke Dunne doesn't look like a Hill staffer, at least not anymore. His frosted quiff and thin line tattoos would immediately set him apart in Washington's conservatively dressed halls of power. But before he ran one of the District's most singular cocktail experiences, Dunne worked in congressional offices in D.C. and on the campaign trail in Wyoming. After the 2016 election, however, Dunne's passion for politics waned. 'I quit because I just couldn't live in that world,' Dunne explained. 'I'm an extremely left-leaning person, and to already be in the conservative world, and then throw populism and hateful rhetoric into the mix, it was indigestible.' Two years prior—half to escape the stultifying culture of his peers on Capitol Hill and half to supplement his meager congressional salary—Dunne began picking up weekend shifts at Wonderland Ballroom, a Columbia Heights dive. The experience scratched a creative itch that politics couldn't and, by June 2017, when Drink Company launched its Game of Thrones pop-up, Dunne jumped on an offer to work security. Within a month, he was behind the bar. The following year, Drink Company partnered with Japanese hospitality firm Plan Do See to design and launch a cocktail bar in the newly opening Eaton hotel in downtown D.C.. The firm also hired Dunne—then still a relative newcomer to the city's craft cocktail scene—to help operate the venue. When the partnership between Drink Company and the Eaton broke down only weeks before the hotel was set to open, Dunne and a handful of Drink Company veterans who also elected to stay on the project were left scrambling to redesign the bar. 'We had to rebrand within three weeks. We had to write a whole new opening menu. Some staff left. It was crazy,' Dunne recalled. The team renamed the bar Allegory and quickly put together a cocktail menu based around literary themes. The cocktails were good, but Allegory lacked a cohesive vision. 'We were a good bar with a really great bar team, but I don't think that we were an excellent cocktail bar,' Dunne said. For Allegory, the pandemic proved a blessing in disguise. The temporary closure led to the departure of most of Allegory's staff, leaving Dunne with near absolute control over its creative direction. 'That's when I took the focus of the bar from being just a really good cocktail bar to being a really conceptual experience,' he explained. From the start, Allegory's walls were decorated with elaborate murals, painted by artist Erik Thor Sandberg, depicting Alice in Wonderland through the eyes of Ruby Bridges—the first black student to attend an all-white school in the South. Dunne doubled down on the concept, creating a storybook menu called 'Down the Rabbit Hole' that wove 10 thematic cocktails together with vivid illustrations imagining Bridges on a journey through Wonderland. In one chapter, the Eden—a bright and boozy orange soda—accompanies an illustration of Bridges as she befriends a medley of unusual characters. In another, a frothy El Salvadorian riff on the Jungle Bird, a classic tiki cocktail, is garnished with the blood of a Jabberwocky as Bridges stands above the slain beast, sword in hand. Allegory's new direction was a resounding success: In 2023, it won Best Cocktail Menu at the Spirited Awards. The next year, it would take home the prize for Best U.S. Hotel Bar, and one of its mixologists, Kapri Robinson, would win U.S. Bartender of the Year. 'Banned in D.C.',—a sequel to Allegory's first storybook menu in which a fictionalized Bridges navigates an apocalyptic version of the nation's capital that has been overtaken by violence, darkness, and censorship—launched late last month, and the menu's broader international influence and impressive creative scale is likely to garner even greater plaudits than its predecessor. Several blocks east, a less obvious successor to the Columbia Room isn't just mixing delicious cocktails—it's pairing them with some of the city's best sandwiches. At Your Only Friend, the brainchild of Columbia Room alums Paul Taylor and Sherra Kurtz, nostalgic flavors, plastic cafeteria-style cups, and a welcoming sandwich counter offer a childhood memory come back to life. The concept began as a pandemic-era pop-up, with Taylor and Kurtz selling sandwiches out of the Columbia Room's kitchen. But as the pandemic dragged on, the two saw a path to turning their temporary project into something permanent. They envisioned a bar with a neighborhood feel, inspired by the local dives and restaurants that made them fall in love with hospitality. 'We wanted to do real dope s–t, but in a place that everybody felt welcome,' Taylor told me. The resulting space is unashamedly unique and a sharp departure from the Columbia Room's serious aesthetic. Taylor and Kurtz take a 'trashy classy' approach, elevating familiar flavors and accessible ingredients to bring the wistful past, in all of its rose-tinted wonder, to the present. The bar's Carb'd Marg is exemplary of its approach: mezcal, Smirnoff Ice, Mountain Dew, and citric acid combine to create a cocktail that is almost frustratingly well balanced given its low-brow ingredients. Another is the Rum & Clear Cola, a translucent riff on a rum & Coke made with a homemade cola syrup and acid phosphate. When the two debuted the drink during a collaboration with Bresca several years ago, Will Patton was almost offended by how good it was. 'I've never been more upset,' Patton joked. 'I was like, you brought this into my house, and you dunked on me like this.' Taylor, Kurtz, and Dunne aren't the only Columbia Room veterans putting down roots in the city either; beverage programs at bars and restaurants like Daru, Trouble Bird, and Albi are also continuations of the legacy. 'I think the Columbia room never really died, because it has really created so many places in D.C. from the people who have gone through,' Kurtz said. Several homegrown bars unconnected with the Columbia Room—Service Bar, Copycat Co., OKPB, Green Zone, Barmini, The Wells, and others—are also making a mark. D.C's homegrown bars aren't the only ones contributing to its rise—several imports have entered, or are soon entering, the scene. The Columbia Room's legacy in D.C. extends beyond just its former bartenders. Today, Death & Co.—one of the most influential bars in New York's cocktail revival—occupies the Columbia Room's former Blagden Alley space. Brown isn't offended that his homegrown success was taken over by one of New York's most storied bars. It was sort of his idea, after all. As D.C.'s mixology profile rose, Death & Co.—which had already expanded to Denver and Los Angeles—began looking at D.C. as a fourth home. Brown, who had befriended Death & Co. bartender Alex Day while at B.A.R., suggested the Columbia Room's space. The idea materialized, and in July 2023, Death & Co. D.C. opened its doors. Day knew stepping into the Columbia Room's shoes was a risk. 'The replacing of the Columbia room, for anyone who had a relationship with it, is going to elicit some level of emotional reaction, and that's scary,' he told me. But Death & Co. worked deliberately to both honor the Columbia Room's legacy and to craft an identity unique to Washington. Though the space was largely redesigned, an iconic tile mosaic that once framed the Columbia Room's bar was preserved—an ode to the building's storied past. 'We have worked really hard to present ourselves to the community not just as Death & Co., but as Death & Co. as expressed in Washington, D.C., and with full respect to the ground that we have taken over,' Day said. In his view, outsiders looking to plant roots in D.C. must embrace, not ignore, the city's distinctiveness. 'One thing that D.C. has excelled with is understanding its cocktail culture and representing the culture of the city in a unique way,' Day said. 'It's not a derivative of New York or London or any other cocktail scene, it's unique to itself.' Soon, one of Death & Co.'s longtime Manhattan rivals will face the same challenge. In 2013, Jack McGarry, an obsessive young bartender from Belfast, opened The Dead Rabbit—half Irish Pub, half cocktail bar—in New York's Financial District. His aim was to champion Irish culture against contemporary misconceptions while mixing world class cocktails along the way. 'There's so many s–t Irish bars, and so many people think we wake up in the morning in Ireland and say 'top of the morning' to each other and eat corned beef and cabbage. And that just couldn't be further from the truth,' McGarry told me. 'My goal has always been to bring the Irish pub into the 21st century, but also to shine a light on contemporary Irish culture and stretch the boundaries of what Americans see as Irish pubs.' The Dead Rabbit will open a location in D.C. this fall, themed on the political story of the Irish in America—a deliberate push to embrace Washington's uniquely political culture. The space will feature a mural of Sinéad O'Connor alongside artwork of prominent politicians involved in the Good Friday Agreement. 'There really isn't anywhere better than D.C. for us to tell that story,' McGarry said. 'Obviously, there's an amazing cocktail culture, there's amazing healthy pub culture, and then a reverence for Irish culture and food.' The Dead Rabbit's new home on F Street will be only feet away from another British Isles import. In February 2020, Silver Lyan—a project of prominent British mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana—opened in a historic bank vault beneath the Riggs hotel. Chetiyawardana, known widely as 'Mr. Lyan,' has been at the leading edge of global mixology for more than a decade, and his bars have pioneered the use of innovative culinary technologies and sustainable ingredients. While Silver Lyan doesn't break the rules of classic mixology, few bars across the world stretch them as far. 'Our process is really about creativity and the way that we define that for ourselves is through our storytelling,' Alex Leidy, the bar's general manager, told me. At Silver Lyan, each drink is a story unto itself, and the team often uses novel ingredients and advanced techniques to impart thematic elements. Take the Parasol Punch—a cocktail based on the first man in London to own an umbrella, who was widely derided for it. Because early umbrellas were made from silk, and silkworms dine on mulberry leaves, the team includes a mulberry ferment in the drink. Tomato honey represents the vegetables thrown at London's umbrella pioneer, and rainwater Madeira represents, well, rainwater. On its previous menu, which was themed on movement and migration, the bar even used a proprietary spirit distilled from emu neck meat—if you stop by, ask one of the bartenders about what that USDA approval process was like. But complexity for its own sake isn't the goal—the drinks also have to taste good. 'We're doing some out-there and avant-garde things because that's where the problem-solving naturally leads us,' Sam Nellis, Silver Lyan's senior bartender, told me. 'But then the question is, how do you take that and make it feel fun and approachable?' For Silver Lyan, the answer is to build a menu that allows customers to engage on their own terms—diving deep into the ingredients, themes, and preparation if they care to, while not being hit over the head with information if they don't. 'Gatekeeping is the death of fun,' Leidy explained. 'Ultimately, the drinks need to be really approachable in and of themselves, without knowing anything about what went into them. We're here to facilitate fun.' For many of D.C.'s homegrown bartenders, the arrival of renowned bars like Silver Lyan, Death & Co., and The Dead Rabbit isn't a threat—it's a validation. 'It's a testimony to the cocktail scene in D.C. that storied bars with their origins in other cities want to open bars here, because D.C. wouldn't be on their radar if we hadn't helped create a homegrown cocktail scene and create an audience for that,' Searing said. 'It's legitimizing,' Dunne echoed. 'I never saw them as a threat, I saw them as something that's gonna push us and make us better, which they have.' Despite the recognition and awards that have come alongside D.C.'s rise, perhaps its most impressive feat has been the continuation of the culture of camaraderie and excellence that was established two decades ago. 'We understand we're a smaller market. We're always going to live in this gigantic shadow that's cast from New York,' Dunne told me. 'We're never gonna get the recognition that we think we deserve, because we're never gonna get the same eyeballs on us that New York or London or any of those other spots do.' But that underdog mentality, and the chip on the community's shoulder that comes with it, has allowed D.C. to maintain its sense of solidarity. 'Everyone seems to be very supportive of the dream of expanding the cocktail scene, creating all this amazing opportunity, and making D.C. this culinary and cocktail hub,' Dunne remarked. 'It's really cool. We're all striving toward the same goal.' When Press Club opened last November, it didn't open in a vacuum. The talent, collective wisdom, infrastructure, and clientele necessary for its success were built on foundations that were developed by Washington's cocktail community for more than two decades. In a sense, that's what makes Patton and Kennedy's achievement so important. It's an individual success, for sure, and the two deserve credit for contributing a unique piece to D.C.'s cultural mosaic. But Press Club—like Allegory, Your Only Friend, Silver Lyan, and many others—is also a collective achievement for the city; evidence that the nation's capital is now pushing cultural boundaries instead of just keeping up with them. Patton and Kennedy have felt the fruits of this foundation acutely as they've converted Press Club from an idea into a reality. 'I've been in Chicago, been in New Orleans, been in a lot of other cities, and when I came to D.C., it was the most welcoming bar community that I've ever been in,' Patton told me. 'It's very mutually supportive, so it was very important for Devin and me to make Press Club evocative of D.C.. We wanted to be celebrating D.C. because we're very proud to have roots here, and we're proud to be part of the scene, and we're very excited to have this community growing.' Kennedy echoed the experience. 'In D.C., everyone just wants to see all ships rise. Everyone's excited for it, because everyone wants D.C. to be a place that is talked about as a great cocktail city.' Press Club is an embodiment of how far the city's cocktail culture has come. On any given night, the space is packed with patrons—co-workers sharing office gossip, couples celebrating anniversaries, cocktail enthusiasts eager to try the new hot spot, and, often, a wary reporter escaping the exhausting churn of Washington politics. And whether they came for the food, music, conversation, or simply to escape the cold, the patrons are participating in and honoring one of America's—and D.C.'s—great traditions: Sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying a great cocktail.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
These 11 Restaurants and Hotels Are the Newest Relais & Châteaux Properties—Including a Bahamas Resort on 2 Private Beaches
Relais & Châteaux just added 11 new members, including nine hotels and two restaurants in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America. Among the highlights is The Cove Eleuthera in the Caribbean, the first and only Relais & Châteaux property in the Bahamas. Washington, D.C.'s Michelin two-starred Jônt and Guatemala City's acclaimed Sublime Restaurant are the two dining additions to the Relais & Châteaux portfolio. Relais & Châteaux, the association of luxury, independently operated hotels and restaurants, has 580 members around the world, from intimate country inns to spectacular oceanfront resorts. Today, the Paris-based organization welcomes 11 new properties, including nine hotels and two celebrated restaurants. 'Our association is firmly committed to a sustainable path so as to contribute, through cuisine and hospitality, to building a more humane and united world, in harmony with living things,' Laurent Gardinier, president of Relais & Châteaux, said in a press release shared with Travel + Leisure. 'It's an honor for me to welcome these 11 new members to Relais & Châteaux, properties that share not only our values but our passion for goodness and beauty.' The latest members mirror the same geographical diversity of the existing collection, with new properties in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America. On the Old Continent, these include Villa Pétrusse, a 19th-century villa set inside a century-old park in Luxembourg. On the French Riviera in Le Lavandou, Hôtel Les Roches opens in June, featuring light-drenched rooms and a pool with prime views of the Mediterranean. Also French, Domaine le Mouflon d'Or on Corsica is a 20-key former aristocratic residence set on 50 acres in the island's Alta Rocca region. Grand Hotel Parker's in Naples is Italy's newest Relais & Châteaux. Built in 1870, the hotel has hosted luminaries like Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf. Perched on a hill with sweeping views of the Bay of Naples, the historic property's 67 rooms and suites are decked in Hungarian-point parquet floors, crystal chandeliers, and period furniture. In Mykonos, Greece, Myconian Sunrise—situated on the island's quieter southern coast overlooking Agrari Beach—has traditional Cycladic architecture, spacious rooms, and a spa. And, on a private bay surrounded by a 50-acre forest on the Turkish Riviera in the Mediterranean, Relais & Châteaux Ahãma opens this June with four restaurants and holistic wellness activities like forest bathing and sound therapy. Enowa Yufuin in the mountains of Kyushu, Japan, is home to guest rooms and villas with private onsens and Restaurant Jimgu, focusing on plant-based, farm-driven cuisine led by chef Tashi Gyamtso. Ran Baas The Palace, a heritage hotel in Patiala, Punjab, India, was once a Maharaja palace, meticulously restored with gilded frescoes and marble floors. In the Caribbean, The Cove Eleuthera—a sibling property of two Relais locations: Mii Amo in Sedona, Arizona, and Twin Farms in Barnard, Vermont—is the first and only Relais & Châteaux in the Bahamas, set on two private, white sand-trimmed coves with access to coral reef diving and sea kayaking. Guatemala City's acclaimed Sublime Restaurant represents Central America, where chef Sergio Diaz creates an ambitious tasting menu that tells the story of the country's culinary heritage and Mayan roots. Also on the restaurant front is the Michelin two-starred Jônt in Washington, D.C., where chef Ryan Ratino is behind the innovative, globally inspired tasting menu. 'I'm pleased to be welcomed as a Relais & Châteaux member," Ratino said. 'This new addition is a reflection of our shared commitment to exceptional experiences, genuine hospitality, and the timeless values that define our brand. We look forward to the journey ahead." You can find more about the new and existing Relais & Châteaux members on Read the original article on Travel & Leisure
