Churchkey first night
It was with an enormous amount of anticipation that I went down to Churchkey last night for their official open. And let me just say at the outset that I was not disappointed.
The bar was originally supposed to open at 5, I showed up around 5:20 and they hadn’t started letting people in yet. So I got in the (already-forming) line and waited. There must have been 50 people queued just to get in the door by the time they opened up at 5:40 or so. People were walking past rubbernecking the line trying to figure out what the big deal was. Most people went straight up to the bar area, though by the time I left there were maybe 4-5 tables occupied at the restaurant downstairs, but it was clear that the bar was the star.
The bar area, for a DC bar in particular, was absolutely enormous, with a long, J-shaped bar that can probably seat 30 – 50 people by itself if I had to guess. Four-top booths behind the barstools with plenty of standing room in between. There were LOTS of people there last night, and it still never felt unmanageable — although the bar staff definitely had their hands full. They had all 50 taps and 5 casks up and running with a supremely impressive tap list (which can be found here. I started off with a Gaffel Kolsch, then moved to the Ola Dubh 40 (on cask!!), to BrewDog’s Paradox (also on cask), to the Ommegang Obamagang.
The start was a little rough, it took way too long for someone to take my order. However, it was made right without my even asking — a manager noticed another gentleman and myself without any sort of liquid refreshment and pulled us a couple for free. Through the evening I saw several bumps smoothed like this — wrong orders, waiting for a drink, whatever. To me it wasn’t that they made mistakes, it was that they cheerfully fixed it and then went a step beyond to make people happy. If Churchkey can keep up this kind of selection, and this kind of customer service-oriented attitude, they’ll do great.
I’ll probably even be back tonight.
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I was one of those people who had an issue – in my case 3 beers were on my tab that my friend and I didn’t order. The bartender I mentioned it to wasn’t our bartender (because he was busy) but he didn’t even bat an eyelash and took care of it, without groveling for my forgiveness. I’ve been in this industry before, and I’ve worked for a place that has the corporate version of the “customer is always right” philosophy (which sucks as an employee because the customer is often enough an a-hole and you’re trying to make all 10 of your tables happy, not just the whiners). BB&C has gotten somethign right, and I imagine most places cannot pull off an opening night like that with that kind of awesome service (and well, awesome everything). I will wait til January when people aren’t going out anywhere to see how expectation and reality ultimately work out, but I tip my hat to every person working for and with this establishment.