The Barhopper

[nacho]

This thread started with:

Well... I should do a thread about favorite bars and new bars...or...whatever. For the once a quarter when I actually go out.

What's sort of nagging at me right now is the hideously named Truorleans, opening up on H St and about 10 minutes from my office. So not only an afternoon beer place, but they also claim that they'll be open at 7am. Finally! My morning beer dream will come true!

During my lunchtime walks, I pass by it every day...and I really don't see how they're going to make the "end of May" opening date. But...maybe when I get back from my NOLA trip, I'll be able to belly up and enjoy some sweet $7 bottles of Abita served by a waitress who's forced to talk with an accent inspired by episodes of Treme.

With new development coming to H Street NE, the addition of TruOrleans Restaurant and Gallery will add an authentic Cajon Creole experience with a twist. Set to open the end of May, TruOrleans will feature family recipes from Lake Charles, LA as well as art work straight from the French Quarter.

Located on the corner of H and 4th NE, the restaurant will be open Monday thru Sunday from 7:00 am to 12:00 am on weekdays and 7:00 am to 2:00 am on weekends. The split level restaurant will offer an upscale experience featuring many Cajun Creole favorites like Po Boys, Gumbo, Jambalaya and Beignets as well as New Orleans drink favorites like the traditional Hurricane, Louisiana specialty beers and a spectacular wine list. The restaurant will offer bars on both levels as well as an outdoor sidewalk café.
For more information, visit our website at www.truorleans.com.

And, now it's shut down...amid a street brawl, tax liens, and other insane problems:


http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2013/09/11/let-the-bad-times-roll-h-street-nes-most-hated-restaurant-closes-after-tax-troubles-lawsuits-and-a-food-fight/

[RottingCorpse]

Can I now admit how that place never turned my crank?

[nacho]

Can I now admit how that place never turned my crank?

It really was the most hated bar in DC, so I think you were safe to admit that at any point.

[nacho]

Bethesda has a new beer garden! Sort of...


http://robertdyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/piazza-beer-garden-bethesda-review.html

[nacho]

Bethesda, MD lost Ri Ra in the summer -- quite suddenly, as well. Now Union Jacks is closing (date TBD). Union Jacks isn't really a loss...it's a frat bar, really. But, during the day and early evening, it's actually quite nice. Good bartenders, a good beer selection, and an interesting bar that sort of twists and weaves so you can hide out in corners and still get the bar feel.

[RottingCorpse]

The Uber class is chasing out all the riffraff.

[nacho]

The Uber class is chasing out all the riffraff.

Bethesda is gaining 7500 new condos/single family homes in the downtown area in 2014, and another 10000 in the Battery Lane-NIH corridor in 2015. Condos the size of my Silver Spring apartment start pricing at 1.1 million.

Ri-Ra left because their rent was being raised from $13,000 a month. It's actually cheaper for them to have a bar in Georgetown than Bethesda.

So...uber class indeed. Very sad. But Bethesda has always had the gentrification bug up their ass. This started as early as 1980 when they squeezed out a certain ice cream store on a quiet tree lined street to make way for the Metro station complex.

[RottingCorpse]

*deer in headlights*

*blink blink*

[Reginald McGraw]

Bethesda, MD lost Ri Ra in the summer -- quite suddenly, as well. Now Union Jacks is closing (date TBD). Union Jacks isn't really a loss...it's a frat bar, really. But, during the day and early evening, it's actually quite nice. Good bartenders, a good beer selection, and an interesting bar that sort of twists and weaves so you can hide out in corners and still get the bar feel.

Are all of them closing? There is one here in Columbia.

[nacho]

Bethesda, MD lost Ri Ra in the summer -- quite suddenly, as well. Now Union Jacks is closing (date TBD). Union Jacks isn't really a loss...it's a frat bar, really. But, during the day and early evening, it's actually quite nice. Good bartenders, a good beer selection, and an interesting bar that sort of twists and weaves so you can hide out in corners and still get the bar feel.

Are all of them closing? There is one here in Columbia.

Yep. The buyer is getting the whole chain.

[nacho]

Col. Brooks finally closes...

Requiem for a Neighborhood Bar: Col. Brooks' Closes
By Jake Berg - September 14, 2012

Col. Brooks' Tavern isn't the kind of bar we normally write about here. It's not a beer bar, not a destination. Just a place in the neighborhood with a better draft selection than it had any right to, with Bell's Two Hearted, and a rotating cast of local beers on tap, cycling through Dogfish, Flying Dog, and Heavy Seas alongside macro products. Chocolate City and DC Brau were added later, poured through tap lines that could and should have been cleaned more often.

But it's bars like this that make a city, that create a "good beer city," that give it personality. Churchkey will forever be a place that put DC on the map as a destination. Bars like Col. Brooks' Tavern are the ones that make you want to move here. That's not to say that the better beer bars in DC aren't also neighborhood spots. Spend five minutes in The Big Hunt in Dupont Circle or Meridian Pint in Columbia Heights and you'll see that these aren't mutually exclusive. But if DC is to be a good beer city, then it's going to be because of everyday, perhaps even banal places like Col. Brooks', establishments that blend in, that feel like your living room. Col. Brooks' did this better than most, acting as a "third place," between work and home, for much of Brookland. It was, is, for a few more hours, a place where anyone in the neighborhood, black or white, blue collar or white collar, was welcome, and felt welcome. Bud or Bell's, DC Brau or Hennessey, with Dixieland jazz on Tuesday nights. A history lesson, courtesy of the Washington Post:

[Owner Jim] Stiegman helped open the tavern 32 years ago, finding 200-year-old pine planks from a barn for the bar, wooden pews from a Pennsylvania church to use as booths and old photographs for the walls. Col. Jehiel Brooks owned the mansion across the street long ago — the neighborhood is named for him — and surviving family members gave Stiegman portraits from legendary Civil War photographer Mathew Brady's studio.

I'm jumping between past and present tense here because tonight is the last night Col. Brooks' will be open. Come 1:30am, it will close, as it always does. It won't open on Saturday. Soon construction will start on a new 901 Monroe St., NE. It will be five storeys tall, with ground floor retail. Jim Stiegman, the owner of Col. Brooks', will be involved with this new building, so I want to be optimistic. I'm not anti-change, sometimes change is good, sometimes change just is, but I'm already nostalgic. Stiegman and the Tavern have been through a lot, including a gruesome triple murder by an ex-employee, which decimated the business.

Whatever moves in, I hope it's that third place, and that it serves craft beer.

Filling the Col. Brooks gap (and building, I think) is:

The Public Option is a new brewpub that will be open in Washington, DC by late summer or early fall. But according to the Washington City Paper, it will also be unique: it will ban customers from tipping and instead simply pay its workers a living wage.

[nacho]

Bethesda now has two "beer gardens." The first is the Piazza Beer Garden:

http://piazzabeergarden.com/

This is actually the porch area at the hideous Cesco/CO2 Lounge. The food sucks (the chicken on the chicken skewers was uncooked, the sausage is boring, the yucca chips are like a salt-lick), and they only have six or so beers. Rotating taps that try to keep it local (the ubiquitous Flying Dog is usually always represented), and three bottles, also local.  All clocking in at $6 or $7 a pint.

While that's all a very strong complaint against them, it's a place I'll probably return to simply because of the location. The deck area is quiet, comfortable, and excellent for people watching.

Next up is Tyber Bierhaus:

http://www.tyberbierhausmd.com/

Located in the "doomed spot" on Old Georgetown (it's a spot that, over the last few years, has seen a rapid turnaround, though all of the places that shuttered were weird redneck dance clubs or some shit).

On the night of the soft opening, we were nearly knocked out by the cleaning fluid fumes and RC got food poisoning from the Wiener Schnitzel. Which is what happens when you order Wiener Schnitzel at a bar's soft opening. And probably what happens when you order Wiener Schnitzel in, you know, America...

 My much less ambitious chicken sandwich was so profoundly unexciting I'm surprised I just mentioned it.

The beer is great. Here we get proper European beers, and you can get the big mugs if you want, and the "beer garden" aspect would be great if they actually had decent outdoor seating (which, upon last glancing over at them as I sped by, they do not).

Certainly worth a second chance on the food, and a more thorough investigation of their beers... I'm also suspicious that they may have a back patio that I missed.

So far, they seem to be doing brisk business.

[RottingCorpse]

I'd like to go back to Tyber Bierhaus for the beer, but the food... Blargh.

[nacho]

I'd like to go back to Tyber Bierhaus for the beer, but the food... Blargh.

They are getting raves for the food... And I know a couple people who prefer them to anywhere else in Bethesda.

But... I agree with you. Those people are fucking nutbags. Beer, beer, beer!

[RottingCorpse]

We should drop in next time I cross the tracks.