Southern Efficiency

High Efficiency

30 Whiskeys and Southern Diner Food

None 4 Photos Southern Efficiency
We’re not sure what you requested for the holidays. Bet it wasn’t a temple to American whiskey, stocked with unique bottles.

Yep, you got one of those anyway.

It’s called Southern Efficiency, and it opens Saturday as the final, Southern-fried installment in Derek Brown’s trifecta of bars along 7th Street.

What we have here: a whiskey bar modeled after Southern lunch counters and general stores. You’ve got bar stools made from old tractor seats and apple-crate shelves behind the bar. And they’ll serve you peanut soup and chicken-liver mousse in a jar. Nice.

But it’s mostly just a sleek bar. So have a seat, preferably with a fellow drinker. Maybe you’ll start with a smoked cola and white whiskey. But where you’ll end up is the 30 well-selected whiskeys, like one made from an oak still in California, and scotch made by an American expat.

So yeah, this isn’t the kind of place you breeze into for a quick happy hour drink. This is the kind of place where you linger. You might even learn something.

Like tonight and tomorrow, when they’re running preview Whiskey 101 classes, which walk you through the vagaries of different American spirits, like the differences between Kentucky and Tennessee whiskeys.

Kentucky whiskey is better at basketball.

Vitals

Southern Efficiency
1841 7th St NW
(between S and T)
Washington, DC, 20001
202-316-9396
website

Extras

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