Southern Efficiency

More a whiskey bar than a cocktail bar, Southern Efficiency is Derek Brown’s third single-subject bar (among Eat the Rich and Mockingbird Hill) along a stretch of 7th Street. Perhaps the most spare of his concepts—the name holds true—what it lacks in cocktail options, it makes up for in whiskey. From Jefferson’s Presidential Reserve bourbon to James E. Pepper 1776 rye (it is D.C. after all), this is the place to find all the stuff J.F.K. talked about when he talked about D.C.