Eebee’s Is the Classic Neighborhood Bar DC Needs Right Now
To view the article in the Washingtonian, click HERE. Written by Jessica Sidman
The Shaw spot serves classic cocktails, draft beers, and a standout cheeseburger
Eebee’s Corner Bar. 1840 Sixth St., NW.
Emily Brown always dreamed of opening a place where the bartender greets you by name, and the regulars down the block bring a small Christmas present to the staff who take care of them. The kind of place you go to gossip with a friend over drinks—then discover, oh hey, this food is really great too. And maybe you stick around and get to know someone new. “What if people met at the bar and then they got married? Wouldn’t that be so cute?,” Brown says. “Just people living real life and being kind and having fun and taking their mind off their troubles.”
For Brown, a lifelong hospitality veteran, that dream of her own “Cheers” starts with the opening of Eebee’s, a play on her initials. It’s a corner bar in Shaw where you can get Miller High Life on tap or a martini—and the cheeseburger is better than it needs to be.
“There’s so much big corporate money from New York coming down here—and I’m the first person to enjoy it, right? I love that Minetta [Tavern] opened here,” she says. “But it is this level of money and support. So I am opening a bar for DC.”
Brown grew up in DC around the hospitality industry—her dad was a bartender at the Bottom Line for many years, and her request for good grades was always a visit to Old Ebbitt Grill. She worked everywhere from a hot dog cart to New York craft beer bars. Her cousin happens to be Andy Brown of Andy’s Pizza, and he convinced her to leave New York to help him open his first pizza shop in the Tysons Galleria mall. As the company grew, Brown became beverage director for Andy’s, and she’s also built the beer program at the Green Zone in Adams Morgan.
Brown had always wanted to own something of her own, but it was a podcast where people on their deathbeds talked about what they regretted that set her on her current trajectory. “I’m like, you’re going to be 90 years old, and you’re going to be like, ‘Oh, I was too scared to try and open a bar?’ It’s not rocket science. So I thought to myself, I’m going to try to get a loan.”
After seven years of hustle and hard work—plus help from family and friends—she opened Eebee’s last week. The bar channels some of Brown’s favorite New York institutions like JG Mellon and Corner Bistro.
“My LLC is very corny,” she says. “It is Dream Come True.”
Brown is continuing to do what she’s known for: securing hard-to-come-by limited release brews. But she’s also got High Life and Guinness. One popular option so far is an ode to McSorley’s Old Ale House, a storied Irish pub in New York. “You put money on the table and you say, ‘I’ll have a beer and you are served two mugs, and there’s a light and a dark. They’re both lagers, and that’s your beer.'” For Eebee’s, Brown is serving 10-ounce light and dark lagers from Schilling Beer in New Hampshire and Sojourn Fermentory in Suffolk, Virginia for $8—both poured out of imported Czech faucets for a cappuccino-like foam on top.
Brown says she’s just as focused on cocktails, with classics like martinis and Manhattans offered multiple ways. “I’m not doing anything overly creative. I bartended a lot. The highest level I achieved is like steakhouse level, meaning I know the drinks and I know not to shake a Manhattan,” she says.
Brown is also highlighting “things that remind you of your grandparents,” like a Rusty Nail cocktail—”an ode to some of my older relatives” with blended Scotch and Drambuie (a sweet, herbal liqueur). And for her young (but legal drinking age) cousins, the bar offers a Dirty Shirley with housemade black cherry soda and vodka. “A lot of grown men are drinking these Dirty Shirley’s, and good for them because it’s delicious,” she says.
The burger is an early star of the food menu. The thick, dry-aged Pat La Frieda beef patty with a 75/25 lean-to-fat ratio is the product of months of research through the depths of Reddit, chef videos on YouTube, and “stalking restaurateurs,” Brown says. The patty rests on a slice of raw onion with a heavy grind of freshly cracked pepper and cheddar-American cheese.
Brown tapped her cousin Andy and pastry chef friend Dru Tevis to create the two-day-fermented dough for the bun, baked in house. As Brown describes it, it’s the kind of bun you can put down when your friend is telling you a crazy story and pick up still intact. “So many buns, it’s like, if I put this burger down, this is going to be a disaster,” she says. The whole thing comes with cottage fries cooked in beef tallow and a pickle spear.
Brown says she also spent more than a year perfecting the turkey club sandwich, from the layering to the amount of salt on the tomatoes to buttering the bread before adding mayo. Other bar food includes crab dip, shrimp cocktail, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, and a sharp cheddar board with fried saltines (another ode to McSorley’s). For dessert, try the three-scoop banana split with brûléed banana, rainbow sprinkles, and a big, neon cherry on top.
Brown’s mom Barbara, who has a background in interior design, helped to design the bar, which is filled with vintage art, beer signs, family photos, and old chandeliers. The 1,800-square-foot space is split into two separate bar areas, with a walnut bar in the front and a copper-top bar in the back. One of the bathrooms is decorated top to bottom in baseball paraphernalia (Brown is a lifelong Orioles fan). The other is devoted to all things theater, another passion.
“Getting to do this with my mama, who is one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, and have this experience with her, I could start crying,” Brown says.
And so there was one design element that was a surprise for her mom: a plaque that reads “Barbara Brown Doesn’t Have a Tab… Ever.”
“I thought she was going to come in and cry or be very moved. She was like, ‘Oh wow.’ And then she was like, ‘So how does this work? Like, all the staff knows, right?'”
The cheeseburger at Eebee's. Photograph by Emily Brown.
Photograph by Brandy Holder.
Eebee’s Light & Dark. Photograph by Brandy Holder.
A martini and a turkey club at Eebee’s. Photograph by Charlotte Rock.
