Bethesda's new bars: American Tap Room and Mussel Bar
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Friday, September 24, 2010
For all its restaurants and attractions, Bethesda's bar scene is rather staid. Sure, there are the usual spots like Rock Bottom, Ri Ra and Flanagan's Harp and Fiddle, Barking Dog, and Caddies and BlackFinn. But they have been open for years.
This summer, though, change came to Woodmont Avenue. Mussel Bar, sister to Washington's excellent Belgian beer bar Brasserie Beck, opened in mid-July. A month later, Reston's American Tap Room opened its second location next door. All of a sudden, drinks after work just got a little more interesting.
Mussel Bar
With its dark wooden booths and chalkboard specials hanging over a large central bar, Mussel Bar evokes a casual European bistro. If one of the 16 barstools isn't available, tall square tables dot the bar area, offering a place to rest your drink or food while you stand. Stopping by on a Monday or Tuesday isn't bad, because there are usually seats available, but the bar gets packed on Friday and Saturday nights. Plus, waits for a table on weekends can stretch to more than an hour, and those folks have nowhere to go but the bar or the outdoor tables.
Large tables and benches on the sidewalk beckon on nice afternoons, though there's no food served outside; just buy a drink at the bar and carry it out yourself. (Table service is pokey.)
Inside, the scent of mussels cooking in curry and garlic wafts through the room from the open kitchen, past the enormous glass-walled coolers displaying dozens of beers for sale. At the bar, every tap pours a Belgian export. The highlight is Brabo pilsner, a crisp, hoppy German-style keller bier that's produced exclusively for Mussel Bar by Huyghe, the Belgian brewery that makes Delirium Tremens. And, yes, it goes well with a steaming pan of mussels.
Thor Cheston, who also oversees the taps at Beck, admits he's still trying to find the "magic combination" of draft beers for Mussel Bar. "Right now, I think it's too expensive," he says, which is true: A snifter of Delirum Tremens is $11, a hoppy Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor runs $12. Those same beers would cost $8.50 or $10, respectively, at Beck. (This, Cheston says, is because of Montgomery County's control of alcohol, which adds "at least a 25 percent mark up" to his costs. And because the orders of beer have to be purchased from the county, it makes it harder to score kegs from the cool, small Belgian breweries.) The lone value is Brabo, which is $7.
Next month, Mussel Bar plans to add a tap dedicated to Antigoon, a strong ale brewed for Beck by Belgium's Brouwerij De Musketiers, and to bump up the by-the-bottle selection from 71 to more than 100. That sounds good to Bill O'Brien, a 50-year-old general contractor from Silver Spring who is eyeing the beer menu. "I can only drink one at a time," he laughs. "I'd like to drink them all."
A few seats away, Susy Finelli, a landscape architect from Silver Spring, is gushing about the atmosphere: "You don't find a restaurant around here that's like this: laid-back, take your time, have a drink."
American Tap Room
With a name like American Tap Room, you might expect a beer selection that would rival ChurchKey's or R.F.D's. Not quite. There are 20 draft beers at the large, dogleg-shaped bar, most sporting such familiar names as Bud Light, Stella Artois and Sierra Nevada. Thirty-two bottles round out the selection. The gimmick with the beers is they come in two sizes: a 16-ounce glass ($5-$7) or a 22-ounce glass for $1 more.
"It's hard to not get the larger size," says Tom Leuba, 46, a lawyer from Chevy Chase who's watching football. "It's not a bad deal," says Sean Keough, 26, who's sitting at the next stool, sipping a super-size Sam Adams Oktoberfest.
The bar area, a mix of blond wood and marble counters, is bathed in light at happy hour, when specials include discounted hot wings and cordon bleu sliders for a standing-room-only crowd. Customers with drinks fill tables along the sidewalk. A pianist plays jazz, standards and classical music every night, setting the mood for a relaxed evening out.
Both Leuba and Keough agree that the Tap Room is a "great place to watch the game," with flat-screen TVs arranged at every angle above the bar, on the walls, in the side dining rooms -- even in the bathroom. It seems there's not a bad seat in the house, whether at the stools that line the walls that offer great street views through plate-glass windows, or even standing at the bar.
"It's not really a sports bar," says Leuba, who has taken his children here for dinner. "It's a restaurant with bar in the middle."
Coming soon: 50 house cocktails devised by bar manager Berry Feiz, including a blue vodka concoction topped with a fright wig of pink cotton candy. When it's served, the cotton candy quickly dissolves into the drink. It's as sweet as you would think.
Mussel Bar 7262 Woodmont Ave., Bethesda. 301-215-8717. http:/
