Apéro, the Champagne bar in a white-painted row house at 2622 P Street NW in Washington's Georgetown, has a second room upstairs with its own street door, the one on the right, and a narrow staircase. That's La Bohème, a tasting room of about 20 seats with a small cocktail bar, where every drink on the list is written to go with one course of a themed dinner. The theme changes every few months. La Bohème opened in October 2023 with Tim Burton, has since worked through Quentin Tarantino, Queen, Hayao Miyazaki, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien, and from October 14, 2026 until January it's the Brothers Grimm.
The owner is Elli Benchimol, an advanced sommelier from San Francisco who opened Apéro downstairs in May 2021 and then spent about a year turning the second-floor offices of the century-old house into La Bohème. Jenn Castaneda-Jones, who spent nine years in the Wiedmaier group and ended up as chef at Marcel's, runs the kitchen. Every theme gets new posters, pillows and props (the restroom gets them too), and the venue describes the Grimm version as moody, "a place where shadow and light coexist." Earlier rooms had fairy lights, Toulouse-Lautrec posters and velvet curtains. La Bohème has a few tables, some booths and a counter at the bar, and Tock lets you choose counter or table.
Grimm Nights in Georgetown
Dinner is $99 for 4 courses or $135 for 6, and in each course you pick one dish from a column of cold appetizers, hot appetizers, entrées or desserts. Every dish has a fairy-tale name and a cocktail written for it. The cocktail pairing is $65 for 4 courses or $95 for 6, and the drinks are $16 or $17 each on their own. There's also a wine pairing at $55 or $85, poured from Apéro's list of more than 700 wines, most of them French and a lot of them grower Champagne. Staff tell a short version of the story behind each course as it arrives.
The Cocktail Pairing
The list leans on house infusions, shrubs, sercial madeira, sherry and calvados. Try the Huntsman ($17), bourbon, Aquavit and beet shrub, served with Stay on the Path, a beef tartare in a rye tartlet under a confit red beet cap. Laziness ($17) is bourbon, caramelized onion vodka, sweet vermouth, sherry, mushroom tincture and miso vinegar, written for The Sluggard & The Snail, an escargot and mushroom gratin. Cinderella ($16) is garnet yam Dolin blanc, caramelized onion vodka, amontillado sherry, lassi and black onion ash, and it goes with From the Ashes, a potato and leek velouté with leek ash and gold leaf.
The Singing Bird ($16) is juniper hibiscus shrub, calvados and sweet vermouth, poured with Under the Juniper Tree, boudin noir on juniper and apple sauerkraut. For dessert, Lips as Red as Blood ($16) is calvados, apple butter syrup and Leopold Bros apple liqueur, next to the Poisoned Apple, a cream cheese mousse glazed to look like one. For those tracking, caramelized onion is in three of the thirteen cocktails, the same as calvados. A few diners have found the pours small.
Booking La Bohème
La Bohème takes reservations only, on Tock, for parties of one to six, at the counter or a table. It's open Tuesday and Wednesday from 5:30 to 9pm and Thursday to Saturday from 5:30 to 10pm, and closed Sunday and Monday. A suggested 20% gratuity and a 2.5% employee-health fee go on every check, and both come off if you ask, so two people doing 4 courses with the cocktail pairing pay $328 before them. There's no elevator, only the stairs. On October 31 there's a Halloween dinner, Into the Grimm Woods, and costumes are encouraged.
Our other DC reviews include Silver Lyan in the old Riggs bank vault and Blue Duck Tavern at the Park Hyatt. If you can't get a table at La Bohème, Apéro downstairs is the walk-in bar, open until 11pm Tuesday to Thursday and midnight on Friday and Saturday, and its $28 Martini Service comes with mixed olives, an oyster and a caviar bump potato chip.
Photos: La Bohème, La Bohème, Dclemens1971 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0), Apéro (downstairs)
