Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Outting Review: Ice Bar

Imagine yourself, arm in arm with someone you love. It's chilly outside. You have a date planned for nice drinks over looking the city at a temporary Ice Bar on top of one of DC's swankiest hotels...

You're walking to the hotel, hoping you haven't gotten there too late, after all, the bar is only opened from 5-10 and you're set to arrive around 8:30. Will there be room around a fire pit? An open air bar on the 14th floor in this weather is going to be a bit chilly...

You arrive at the lobby, a well dressed, professional "bouncer" checks your id, hands you a wrist band, then scans his card in the elevator for you. You and another few people head up to the bar. Down the hall, out the door, there's a covered pool, a stunning view blocked by absolutely no one and no thing.


You glance around the bar:

There are some cool candelabra type things, a DJ playing Euro Mix music that Chadd describes sounding like: "unnss unss unsss DESIRE unnsss unss unsss PASSION." But hey, we're at a swanky place, we'll roll with that.

There's also a seating area:

And the ICE BAR!

So what's missing? Fire pits and people.

I don't know if they want to call a corner of ineffective space heaters and a gas flame in the side of a wall (that does not produce heat) a fire pit, but definitely not as advertised. And crowd? They must have also gotten the hint and taken a hike.

We both got a drink (even though we were freezing, neither of the warm cocktails sounded good at the time: spiked hot cocoa and mulled wine) and went for the cold specialty cocktails. One was some sort of firey vodka thing--jalepeno (I think?) infused vodka with some sort of juice and bitter oranges and I had some sort of Lychee nut vodka drink. Neither was particularly impressive and at the steep price of $12 a drink, they certainly weren't something to write home about. The bar tender poured Chadd's drink sloppily into the cup, so when he held it....wet cold hands.

We watched a couple try out the ice luge (cool), but I think they were as disenchanted as we were, even post luge. It was going to take a lot more than a cold shot of vodka to make it work.

 High Points:
- Cool View
- Cool ice bar
- Cool concept

Low Points:
- No fire pit (effing freezing)
- Bad/Expensive Drinks
- No "scene" as it were
- Poor execution

Rating (based on a 1-5 scale):
1

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