A riveted steel door on 18th Street in Adams Morgan, with a small barred grille at eye level and an iron ring for a knocker, is the way into Code Red, a Prohibition-themed speakeasy and cocktail bar in Washington DC that has been taking passwords at that grille since it opened in the spring of 2023.
Knock, and someone at the grille will ask you for the code. The bar's own hint is that the answer is in the name, and The Infatuation gave it away in its 2023 review: it's "red." The name is also painted on the round signs hanging in both shop windows, between an old STP sign and a Route 66 shield (so the password is more or less posted out front). Regulars tend to know the doorman by name.
Code Red's building at 2440 18th Street NW has been a bar before. It was Millie & Al's from 1963 until April 2016, the place where $1 Jell-O shots came out whenever a dancing skeleton announced a fresh batch, and then Bom, a Korean fried chicken restaurant, until 2022 (Ghosts of DC has the full story). Code Red was announced at the end of 2022 with 74 seats and a code to get in, and it's run by American Dream Restaurant Group, whose other places include Roofers Union next door at 2446.
A Tree Grows in Adams Morgan
Inside, Code Red is dark and very red, with rows of bare Edison bulbs hanging from a pressed-tin ceiling, a back bar lit red, velvet stools at the bar and small tables on the floor, birdcages overhead and a live tree growing out of the middle of the room. The bartenders work in newsboy hats and sequined shirts while swing and jazz records play, and the homepage asks you to "KEEP THE DAMNED THING QUIET!" An antique rotary telephone sits against the brick.
The Drinks at Code Red: Pre-, Pro- and Post-hibition
The cocktail menu is split into Pre-hibition, Pro-hibition and Post-hibition, and nearly every drink comes with a line of history in parentheses. The Southside ($17) is Gin, Simple, Lemon, Mint, rumored according to the menu to have been Al Capone and his gang's favorite in the 1920s, and the Last Word ($17) is Green Hat Gin, Absinthe, Luxardo, Lime, an ode to the Man in the Green Hat, the bootlegger who delivered liquor to most of Congress for ten years. Try the Kinky Thompson ($16), Bourbon, Honey Syrup, Lemon, named for a Prohibition agent who got the nickname from his tight curly hair and, per the menu, first made the papers after he shot a moonshine still-tender during a raid.
The house drink, the Code Red ($17), is Vodka, House Made Grenadine, Cointreau, Citrus. For a splurge there's the "100 Year" Sazerac ($25) with Bhakta Rye, Armagnac, XO Calvados, Simple and Bitters, or the Crystal Service, made tableside: an Old Fashioned with Elijah Craig, a Whistle Pig Manhattan or a Tanqueray Negroni, at $22 a person with a two-person minimum. Bourbon drinkers should look at the flights, which run from $25 for the Virginia Roots flight of Ragged Branch, from Virginia, up to $105 for The Van Winkle Racket, two Blanton's plus the 10- and 12-year Pappy Van Winkle, and all of them are half price on Wednesdays and Thursdays (the Racket comes to $52.50). The zero-proof list is called Prohibition-Approved, and the menu notes under the Faux-Jito ($12) that some bars kept "virgin" drinks on hand as decoys in case of a raid.
Code Red is also a restaurant, with Chesapeake Bay oysters ($15 a half dozen), grilled octopus ($22), smoked bone marrow ($28) and a 4-ounce cut of A5 Kagoshima Wagyu on a hot stone ($55). The cocktails and the service are steadier than dinner, so if you're particular about food, come for drinks and a small plate like the smoked gouda arancini ($16) and eat dinner elsewhere.
Getting a Seat (and a $7 Southside)
Code Red opens at 5pm every day but Sunday and closes at 10pm on Mondays, 11pm Tuesday and Wednesday, 1am Thursday and 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. Book on OpenTable, since walk-ins go on a waitlist at the door, though on a full night some of them still get a seat at the bar. Happy hour runs from 5 to 7 daily, with the Southside, Kinky Thompson and Mary Pickford at $7 and the Last Word and a classic martini at $10. Code Red is one of six bars in our guide to Washington DC speakeasies, along with Allegory, and our guide to the best bars in Washington DC covers the rest of the city.
On Tuesdays from 5 to 7 the oysters are $1 each.
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