Gallery Place: Penn Commons, Denson Liquor Bar and Ella’s Wood Fired Pizza

Gallery Place…what takes you there? This is an area of DC with something for everybody: museums (jewels of the Smithsonian group – American Art Museum, Portrait Gallery), fee-pay commercial favorites such as The Spy Museum and Madame Tussaud’s, Ford’s and Landsburgh Theaters, sports and other Capital One Arena fare, or, the cornucopia of two movie theater complexes – E Street and Regal Gallery Place. Time enjoying any of these may make you feel like you need some refreshment around about Happy Hour time. On another hot summer day, the Happy Hour Sleuths did the hard work for you and scoped out three establishments in pursuit of cool, refreshing drinks and enough snacks to stave off the the hunger that intensive cultural (high-brow or low-) exploration brings. Thankfully, the Happy Hour (HH) offerings at Gallery Place are many and we’ll be back to fill in the stable.

Penn Commons

If you want to get your sporty on, get you to Penn Commons, 700 6th Street NW. With multiple television screens, this is the go-to for fans of the action around the corner at Capital One Arena or a easy place to cheer your favorite sport, on cable, in the cavernous, convivial space. The full evening extension of happy hour (plus all day Sunday) really makes this a good, basic pre- or post-visit to anything you may be catching in the area. Beers, beers and more beers, on tap, with $5 and $8 happy hour pulls, $5 sports-bar wines, lower end rail liquors and occasional interesting speciality cocktails ($6) certainly make this the place to stock up before getting to the pricier Capital One Arena bars.

No real HH food menu, but grab the bar menu to order shareable “towers” of fried food ($30) and some decent small plate type offerings (we tried the onion rings), but not the spot for HH bargain food. (There is also a late night bar menu, which is outside our regular HH window, so no chance to sample.)

The place fills up quickly – all those pre-Arena crowds and tourist families with parents looking to get a respite buzz before packing into the hotel for the night with the kiddies- but it can clear out quickly as patrons look to maximize their seat time across the way or get to a quieter zone before melt down.

The nitty gritty:

Happy Hours: Monday – Saturday, 4 p.m. – close. Sunday, all day

Bathrooms: It was beginning of shift and they could use a goood scrub – not sure what later in night would be like.

Transport: Gallery Place Metro (red) and multiple bus stops near by.

Accessibility: Easy roll in with enough low seating near the bar to feel part of the action.

Denson Liquor Bar

Bogey’s Sam Spade would be very happy at our next stop, Denson Liquor Bar, 600 F Street NW. It’s rich in classy 1930’s vibe and with its subterranean, down-the-stairs entry, you leave the tourists behind and embark on a speakeasy adventure. As the name promises, this is a place for some good drinks: HH drinks are made with good, mid-level liquor ($9), with some interesting specialty cocktails using variously gin, mezcal, Aperol, cava and Swedish punsch (like a Nordic rum!). Bartender Mike will get you though the choices in good humor.

Good $6 wines (including cava), but beer drinkers will be staring at the sole Carlsberg Pilsner ($6) on HH. Similarly, the happy hour food choices are limited (we tried the very good six raw oysters,$10), but the regular menu does have some appropriately priced small plates.

The nitty gritty:

Happy Hours: Monday – Saturday, 4:30 – 7 p.m. This small space fills up very quickly with HH revelers, so plan accordingly.

Bathrooms: After a trek down a creepy corridor you will not be disappointed.

Transportation: Gallery Place Metro (red) and multiple bus stops near by.

Accessibility: Unfortunately, not obviously or easily accessible – entry is down a narrow staircase to the lower level of 600 F Street. Further confusion is this entrance is actually on 6th Street, across from the fire station. Denson takes its secretive speakeasy vibe very seriously!

Ella’s Wood Fired Pizza

Feeling hungry and in need of some substantial HH food fare, we steered to Ella’s Wood Fired Pizza, 610 9th Street NW. Value for money, this was the best of our day’s HH trifecta: good rail liquor, wines, and beers and a spot-on $9 HH Maker’s Mark Manhattan. A much more extensive HH food menu, but we went with the 7” pizzas, bargains at $7. Service was good and attentive and the place was appropriately lively for our 6 p.m. visit.