The New D.C. Dive With a Great Burger That People Are Talking About
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Eebee’s owner Emily Brown builds the bar of her dreams with help from family and friends in high places.
Eebee’s Corner Bar just opened in Shaw last weekend, but its well executed burger, beer list, and right-at-home feels already have the tight knit Northwest neighborhood’s full attention (1840 6th Street NW). It may be a dive on paper, but the promising new establishment is more than that. Eebee’s represents a years-long culmination of meticulous thought and effort from its first-time owner and beer aficionado Emily Brown.
Its light and dark beers – two 10-ounce mugs of Czech-style Schilling Alexandr and Sojourn Midnight ($8) – are “selling like crazy,” she reports.
“Shaw is a thriving neighborhood filled with so many great people. I want to be its ‘Cheers,’” she says. “People are already coming up to me saying this [bar] feels like Philly, New York, the Midwest – or wherever they’re from. They just feel comfortable.”
The tight, but strong, bar food menu is generating early buzz for its burger. The patty – a dry-aged Pat LaFrieda blend with a beautiful sear – gets blanketed with melty American and cheddar cheeses and a hefty helping of freshly ground pepper.
The Maryland blue crab dip composed of sherry, shallots, and Old Bay arrives with what she calls an “Etsy’s best” crab spreader and a “please don’t steal” tag line. With a predominantly front-of-house background, Brown tapped a consulting chef to get the kitchen up and running.
A six-count shrimp cocktail arrives with horseradish and fried saltines.
The D.C. native is a lifelong hustler who says she’s “done it all” – starting with waiting tables at 16, working hot dog carts, spending a season at the Starboard in Dewey Beach, “cheesy chain” restaurants in Maryland, and bartending at “every kind of place in NYC — low to high, awful to cool.”
“Somewhere in there, I got really into beer,” she says.
She went on to spearhead beer programs in NY, and locally, at Adams Morgan’s essential bar Green Zone and Andy’s Pizza – the NY-style slice sensation with a dozen locations across the DMV. Her cousin is its founder Andy Brown, who convinced her to move back from NY to help open the first one in Tysons.
Following a years-long feat to secure a loan, she “fell in love” with the vacant corner space that most recently housed chic Italian restaurant Quattro. “When I realized the street parking was in my zone, I was sold,” she laughs. Another selling point was its gas-lit lanterns out front, which are reminiscent of her longtime go-to Old Ebbitt.
The indoor makeover was extensive, to say the least. The front bar was completely demolished and built from the ground up out of walnut and polished brass, and a newly added bar in the back is composed of oak and brushed copper.
Her general contractor builds all of Andy’s pizzerias (and loves a Kölsch, she adds), and she traveled around with her talented pastry chef friend Dru Tevis – winner of Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship – to develop a “crusty, yet formidable” sesame seed bun for the burger. Her “dough master” of a cousin stepped up to help perfect the recipe, and Eebee’s now has its own proprietary bun baked fresh daily.
Her architect is Emma Fowler of Fowler Architecture + Design, a former roommate in NY. “We used to live in a shoebox apartment together when we were both bartenders and broke,” she says. Fowler went on to work for a major firm and took her own leap to start her own. “Having her design my first bar is incredibly special,” she says.
The same signage artist behind Baltimore’s top-ranked Irish pub the Wren hand-painted the windows in block gold lettering.
Brown also teamed up with her mom, who lives in Adams Morgan and holds an interior design degree from University of Maryland, to put together the look. “We poured countless hours into the interior — cutting out baseball players, hunting for antiques, mixing vintage beer signs with her 1950s Italian mirrors,” she says. She surprised her upon opening with a plaque reading: “Barbara Brown Doesn’t Have a Tab…Ever.”
“What we’ve done together (on this non-corporate budget) feels like magic. Without her it wouldn’t be half as good,” she says.
Local sports fans like herself will appreciate the bathroom’s wraparound tribute to MLB greats under a canopy of baseballs she sourced from a diehard collector. The other goes full-on theater as a nod to her NYC days – splashed with everything from Broadway Playbill covers to a photo of Barack Obama meeting the cast of Hamilton.
Hospitality has always been in her blood. Her dad worked for years at downtown drinking institution the Bottom Line, and his picture is one of many framed family portraits upon entry that include great grandparents, siblings, and Andy when he won a 2021 international pizza contest. There’s also subtle nods to herself, like a preserved marlin she caught in Mexico that now hangs over the back bar.
Eebee’s stays open daily until 2 a.m. (and 3 a.m. on weekends), with service starting at 5 p.m. weekdays and noon on Saturday and Sunday, and its late-night kitchen is win for nearby industry folks getting off their shift.
Green Zone alum Chris Donovan was the first pick to lead the bar, she says, because he takes “my old man bar desires” and translates them well. The growing list of classic cocktails starts with an array of icy martinis.
Brown will add more than 20 seats to the 73-person restaurant when she opens the outdoor patio with a newly installed drink rail (similar to what D.C.’s popular Pearl Street Oyster Bar does).
“I want Eebee’s to be the kind of bar where the bartender knows the three things you like to drink,” she says. “Where you can come in on your best day or your worst and feel welcome.”
