Bar Pilar

It’s a shame this place doesn’t have a better overall review. I’ve had dinner here multiple times and I always leave impressed, expectations surpassed.
Also, and this cannot be understated, I’ve had a better slider nowhere else. It doesn’t mater what kind of slider they make, they’re all stupendous. $ 3 during their happy hour (5 – 7 on weekdays). Get four. He’ll get six. It’s an orgasm in your mouth with each bite.

We went last night for restaurant week. The food was great, service excellent, and we left very satisfied. Here are the details:
1) We were running 10 minutes late and we called on the way and they said that should be fine but if we are are going to be more than 15 minutes late let them know
2) We had a very competent and knowledgeable female waitress. I loved that that when we asked for opinions and suggestions she gave us her personal favorites.
We had a four course pre-​fix for $ 35, here are the courses
Before ordering we each ordered a glass of wine, my wife got a Grenache I think and I asked for a recommendation, I got a Cote Du Rhone that was very strong — the way I like, the waitress told me this was because it was 100% Grenache. I liked her wine and loved mine, mine was $ 12 a glass but I felt worth it and had another. My wife’s was $ 9 a glass.
i) I had the Buttermilk Fried Chicken Skins, Maple Sriracha Glaze which was just okay but my
had Chicken Liver & Sriracha Pâté with Grilled Bread which was awesome. We were so impress how much Chicken liver pâté they gave us, it came in a small jar. So we shared this and it tasted just like Duck foie gras. I do not like liver normally but love foie gras. We really loved it
ii) Second course my wife had Charred Brussel Sprouts, Guanciale, Cider and I had Curried Cauliflower, Lentil Hummus, Sherry Currants. The Brussel sprouts were nice and unique and sort of tart with a light juice. The Cauliflower was fantastic. This was a recommendation from the waitress and was spicy with the lentils and tasted like it was indian or asian influenced. We both loved my course
iii) 3^rd course my wife had Grilled Calamari, Napa Cabbage Slaw, Bok Choy, Kohlrabi and I had Lamb Belly Bolognese, Gnocchi, 18 Month Pecorino. Again my wife’s was good and decent but the Lamb was awesome!!! I loved it as did my wife.
iv) For desert and last course we both got and LOVED Valrhona Caramelia Chocolate Cremeux, Smoked Sea Salt, Coffee Anglaise, Pistachio. My wife could not finish hers but I could finish hers (I road on bike 1 hour before dinner and that helped).
Then the waitress before our last coursed tempted me with a Madeira. I initially said no but really wanted one. She had two and offered to split one order into two half glasses. One was thicker and more like a port (the one the waitress recommended) and that we was great. The other one was lighter like a thin Sherry and was nice too but not as good as the heavier one.
We both left very content and liked it quite a bit. Our waitress checked in on just enough to ensure that we were doing fine. She did not smother us or leave us alone for too long. We never were here before and was shocked with how hip the neighborhood and restaurant was.
We are fans. If my wife’s dishes ere 10 of out 10 we would have given it 5 stars. If I could give it 4 & ½ stars I would

The first time I ever felt full leaving a small plates restaurant! I have been meaning to check out Bar Pilar for a while, and finally had the chance last night. I really dig the nautical theme with a nod to Hemingway, and I liked that the place had much more of a neighborhood feel than many other places on 14^th that are designed to look and feel trendy to justify the price tag.
The food was delicious. I had the fried chicken slider to start, followed by the lamb belly Bolognese gnocchi, and a morning bun/​chocolate croissant-​like dessert. The gnocchi were incredible, worth going back a second time just for that! The dessert was quite decadent, topped with a bourbon-​caramel and confectioner’s sugar glaze and vanilla gelato.
The staff were very friendly and courteous. I had an early reservation, so the hostess actually gave me a choice of where I wanted to sit, which was greatly appreciated. The waitress was very friendly, knowledgeable about the menu, and offered some great recommendations.
I think this spot is definitely worth another visit. While the menu can be a bit pricy, the happy hour specials are great, and still offer a wide assortment of the menu.

Came by for food on Wed evening. Small plate menu, which changes weekly. Really good selection of local and organic options. Had the duck prosciutto toast — very good, didn’t really care for the deviled eggs, but the lamb bolognese was awesome. Excellent cocktails — the Pimms was very refreshing. Would def go back.

I don’t know how I haven’t had brunch here before! The food is delicious and it is not overly crowded so we had great service and the food was delivered quickly. I had the smoked salmon tartine: it was rich and flavorful and the aioli was perfect. My boyfriend had the «eggs your way:» the home fries were on point and the eggs were cooked exactly how he likes them (over-​medium). His only critique is that the bacon was not as crispy as he prefers.
Both meals were hearty and worth the price. I will always pick Bar Pilar over Café St. Ex.

don’t come here if you have a large party (or at all, maybe).
I made a reservation three weeks in advance for a double birthday brunch. The day before, I received a confirmation via text and responded accordingly. However, when we arrived, we were told that our table had been given to another party without the restaurant verifying that they were the right group.
After about 20 minutes of hemming and hawing, the management was able to cobble together a table for 14 (despite the fact that there was little to no room to actually move around, get into our seats, etc).
Service was abysmal. They refused to comp anything other than a sad dessert, rather than admitting to their own mistake.
So, avoid. There are tons of great places on 14^th that would be happy to have your business. Bar Pilar is apparently not one of them.

Okay, I went by this week for happy hour and a quick bite…
It was nice and quiet!!!
Bartender was awesome. And I got my food quickly. Pumpkin quinoa was delicious. Happy hour Cab was smooth and easy.
This place is now back on my list of go-to’s for the neighborhood.

I never thought the food here would be good, but I was wrong. I came here after losing patience to wait for a table at Ted’s Bulletin and I am glad I did. It was full but we found a sitting under the stairs by the window, which was great. I ordered the Farro bowl with roasted beets and butternut squash and it was fantastic! Service was a little slow, but they were busy. I would love to come back and try their cocktails!

On Tuesday evening, my boyfriend and I enjoyed Happy Hour here. It was a gorgeous day, and we were able to sit at one of the two tables outside. The table was a little wobbly, but our server did her best to try and fix it.
The drink specials were awesome! My boyfriend got a Pilar Paloma, which was delicious. I got the W.G.W. Sangria Slushie, which was also really good. It was tangy/​not as sweet as I was expecting, but I’m really glad I tried it. For my second drink, I got the Alto Lima Vinho Verde (white wine). It was quite tasty and my favorite of the three drinks we ordered. The drinks were a great value at $ 5 a piece.
My only complaint is that the food specials were strange, and limited, and we couldn’t find anything we wanted to eat. The Happy Hour menu wasn’t really our style, but if you’re looking for a departure from the usual selections of basic bar food, you should definitely try this place!
Overall, the service was fast and the prices were good. If you’re in the area, check it out for Happy Hour.

Tables are a bit small, so reservations are highly recommended (and easily made, even the day of). There’s a slightly shambolic but charming feel to the place, with peeling walls and dim lighting.
It’s small-​plates, but four or five orders can easily satisfy three, as it did for our group). Standouts: fried chicken slider (I could easily eat three of these), spiced baby carrots, and chorizo and pork belly. The last was more generously sized than the others, and we could barely finish it. The dishes I would pass on were the heirloom tomatoes and straciatella, and the coq au vin. I wish I had tried the duck prosciutto toast, pork cheek with truffle on brioche, and the lamb belly, but sadly, my stomach is not bottomless, and these are all rich dishes.
They have happy hour drink specials, and their drinks certainly have a kick to them. Most of the cocktails sounded good, but I couldn’t resist the slushie — with fresh fruit, I believe, as they changed the menu once they ran out of some ingredients.
Our server was attentive, and very efficient with the timing of plates coming out, and when we ordered food to go.

Let’s talk about Bar Pilar’s brunch. It’s on point. and on fleek. However, you want to put it, they know what they’re doing.
Whatever you do, start with the lemon ricotta and blueberry pancakes. I also recommend the fried Chicken Biscuit with sausage gravy and cheddar grits.
The service here was honestly PHENOMENAL and i never say that. Our waitress went above and beyond and was so pleasant and attentive.
Also, the music is consistently great.
A couple of my friends get so excited when we talk about this place that they’ve shortened it and shout out BARPLAR. This is not necessary to my review but I feel like it counts for something.

The first time I came to Bar Pilar many years ago, it was considered to be in a sketchy neighborhood and it struck me as a nondescript dive bar of no great aesthetic or culinary merit. How the times have changed. 14^th Street is gentrifying faster than almost any other neighborhood, the Black Cat seems like an anachronistic oddity, and Bar Pilar has a fresh coat of yellow paint and an upstairs with a solid brunch menu.
The interior is still pretty muted, the décor isn’t flashy but at least it’s not striving to fit in with its fancy-​pants surroundings. The service was decent, at 11am on a Sunday with few tables upstairs occupied I thought our server was a little slow getting our order after bringing coffee and we had to flag her down to bring the check. On the other hand, she was very friendly and good at checking back in with more coffee, plus brunch isn’t about hurrying, so it wasn’t much of a problem.
The food is like the décor, nothing too flashy, it likely won’t be gracing the cover of Bön Appetit anytime soon, but it will taste good and fill you up. My favorite dish, the «hangover cure,» sounds like it should be super heavy, a bowl with a foundation of biscuits and sausage gravy with cheesy eggs and potatoes laid on top. In fact, the eggs and biscuit are fluffy and the potatoes aren’t greasy, so the whole thing is filling without making you feel like you need a nap.
Someday soon, if it isn’t already, Bar Pilar will be like the children’s book about the cute little house that had a giant city build up all around it, the last holdout for regular people in a sea of chic brunch locales. I hope it survives, or else us regular people will have to find someplace other than 14^th Street for brunch.

My first meal at Bar Pilar was a little all over the place. The things that were done well which I really loved were done REALLY well whereas a couple dishes I felt were underwhelming were a tad difficult to swallow. Literally. That being said, the service at Bar Pilar was wonderful. We had a very attentive and friendly waitress who volunteered recommendations and checked on us just often enough where we felt taken care of but not too often to be pushy or superfluous.
Bar Pilar is proud of its homemade pastas, which is a great mentality to have regarding one’s proprietary pasta. However, the chorizo pasta with pork belly we ordered was overly salty and very al dente. You know when you bite into a tube of pasta and you see a bit of white «crunch» factor in the cross section? Yeah. In addition, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the sauce/​meat to pasta ratio was absurdly high. Possibly as a result, the dish was ridiculously salty. The silver lining here was that Bar Pilar is one of those restaurants where your water glass will never be empty. Well done, service.
We also ordered a spicy Eggplant dish that had a SE Asian twist. Perhaps that was a terrible idea for a non Asian establishment, so consider the following a warning not to make the same mistake. :(The little eggplants tasted like they were soaked in mint essence and fish sauce: super salty/​umami with this weirdly aggressive minty toothpaste flavor. Needless to say, this dish was the hardest to swallow.
On a brighter note, our appetizers were awesome. The duck prosciutto toast with friend egg was creamy, salty, cured, and novel. The duck is a tad salty, too, but that’s almost expected. My favorite appetizer was the heirloom tomato, pesto, and stracciatella toast. It was a fresh, vibrant, richly flavored starter, and apparently the cheese is made fresh in house (our waitress aptly described it as fresh mozzarella flavored with consistency of ricotta).
For dessert, we ordered a grilled peach with a scoop of lychee sorbet, which was a great end-​of-​summer treat. I would have liked to see the lychee sorbet be less icy and more smooth in texture but the flavor and temperature combinations were pleasant. In sum, certain things on Bar Pilar’s menu are really great and others not so much. Pick wisely. The service and ambience, however, are warm and welcoming!

This review is for a restaurant that is a 4 star restaurant, but could, upon return, be a 5 star restaurant.
I went with a friend last night for the late night burger power hour. Upon returning, I will examine the menu in greater depth.
The ambiance was nice, albeit a bit too trendy, but what can you expect across the street from a trader joes on U street? The crowd was mostly yuppies drinking expensive cocktails.
As for the burger, my friend commented it was in the top 10% that he has had. I retorted with «top 20.» It is in no way on par with Kumas or Au Cheval in Chicago, but it deserves points for creativity. The pickles were amazing as was the take on a whopper/​Big Mac with the two buns.
We each had a drink. My beer was roughly average, maybe below average. My friends cocktail reeked of too much simple syrup, but was well constructed.
I will be back!

Hipster but cool interior
Comfortable
Nice staff
Great drinks
Amazing pork Belly hash
I was impressed, even jaded Washingtonians were impressed,

When I used to intern at the 9:30 Club many moons ago, Bar Pilar was the beacon for a welcoming neighborhood spot on a street that had limited dining options. Almost a decade later, the restaurant reminds me of the 14^th Street days of yore… back when President Obama was an unknown senator from Illinois and when GMU’s basketball team was poised to take the NCAA by storm.
While 14^th Street has grown rapidly since those idyllic, innocent days of yesteryear, Bar Pilar has consistently remained a friendly, neighborhood staple that does not take itself too seriously.
How can you not love?
+ The house crackaroni and cheese sold at street value (Going price as of April, 2015 is $ 10).
+ A bar menu that includes fried chicken skins (can I buy this by the bucketload!!!) and banh mi with phở on the side for dipping.
+ A seasonal and organic menu using local produce. Their ramps with a poached egg and bread crumbs should not be missed!
+ Straightforward but delicious cocktails for $ 10…ON FOURTEENTH STREET! I literally paid that much for a vodka soda in Winchester, Virginia a few weeks ago.
+ Ramen: The boy has a tendency to get ramen wherever he goes and definitely gives their rendition two thumbs up. It’s not classic Japanese style ramen but when you put bacon, duck eggs, and crispy pork in a pork-​based broth you will get unadultered, pure, deliciousness.
+ Everyone knows that chipwiches are king when it comes to frozen treats. Bar Pilar takes it a step further by introducing a housemade triple chocolate chip cookie, stuffing it with vanilla bean gelato, rolling it in chocolate chips and pairing it with a shot glass of cookies and cream milk. This is definitely a sharable dish as it comes with two sandwiches.
My only criticism is I was not a fan of their shaky beef on watercress salad. The salad was DRENCHED in a salty dressing so you could not taste any of the brightness or crispness of the veggies. The meat was tender but did not have any any of the characteristic char that makes shaky beef so wonderful.
Service was fast, efficient and friendly. It is obvious why this place this place has become such an iconic part of 14^th St over the years.

We came here w/​some friends who live in the neighborhood.
Very cool looking little place. It almost seems European. We always sit at the bar, mostly because all the tables are usually taken.
They boost a really good selection of beers, including Denizens from Silver Spring. I’ve never tried any of their crafted cocktails, but they look delicious as they’re going by me.
Their brunch menu is stellar, our neighborhood friends swear by the Hangover Cure. I’ve only tried the Fried Chicken Biscuit w/​gravy. Very good, not too salty. During happy hour, I fully recommend the Chef’s mini slider. It changes, so you’re bound to get something different almost every time. Though if you get the pulled pork, be warned: you’ll want about 5 more.
This place is great for a quick drink before a show at Black Cat, brunch after the Cherry Blossom 10 miler, or really, anytime.

I came here on a warm Friday night, and I arrived 30 minutes late to a reservation. They graciously held our table, which was unexpected and awesome. Service was very friendly, and our waitress in particular was suggestive and personable.
I had several of the same cocktail, piñata something? Gin and yuzu. Not too sweet. Fruity but not headache inducing.
The food was fine, nothing to write home about, and incredibly small portions. At least the food was rich enough that it was filling, and the small plates allowed us to try several dishes. Halibut ceviche had 5 pieces of fish… tasty but I had to fight my date for the last piece. The shaking beef salad was alright; basically thin salty pieces of beef in a salty salad. The fried chicken skins were exactly that, and I’m sure they prevented my hangover with all the grease. Grilled ramps made us very happy. We had the dark chocolate cremeux for dessert, and we left satiated and happy.

I really liked this bar — I kind of wish that I had arrived early enough to snag one of the outdoor tables they had set up outside, but the interior was cozy and welcoming. I ordered a Denizens Third Party Tripel to start with — It was smooth and refreshingly delicious. The bartender was friendly and attentive, and kept the water coming.
For food, we ordered the duck breast with beet greens, duck fat carrots, and foie gras fritter and the grilled calamari with tuxedo gnocchi, fumet, and roe. Everything was delicious! The duck breast was perfectly cooked, and everything on the plate complimented the rich, buttery flavor. The calamari surprised me – I don’t know why I assumed it would be breaded, but it wasn’t. Overcooking always seems like such an ever-​present danger with calamari… but, of course, not at Bar Pilar! They provided wonderfully textured, perfectly-​cooked, wonderfully textured, little bites that popped with flavor in your mouth. The slight char from the grill on the outside was also a nice touch. And, at $ 14 and $ 13 respectively, I thought both were priced well for the portion size.
I wish I would have gotten to try more plates… but I guess that’s what I’ll do on my next visit (hopefully soon)!

****Only really had drinks here so my star rating doesn’t reflect eating entrees****
My girlfriend and I have been meaning to check out Bar Pilar for a while now but had never actually gone in since I was under the impression that it was a lot smaller than it actually is. I always look in the window and see a large crowd and decide to keep walking. Last night, however, we were looking to have some drinks and decided to pull the trigger and actually go inside. I’m so glad that we did because the experience was pleasant from start to finish. We walked in and it was very crowded– we were about to leave but asked if there was anything upstairs and were informed that there was another small bar up there. We decided to take a peak– to my surprise, it was a whole additional dining room and bar. I’d say there were approx 8 bar spots and 60 seats at tables ranging from 2 to 8 seat tables.
We asked them if we could sit at a table even though we were only drinking and they were super friendly about letting us even though the tables are typically reserved for people ordering food. Our server was super friendly and very inviting. Even though she was busy, she stopped by to chat regularly and we learned a lot about the place and the menu. We had a small cheese plate which was 5 $ that came with a few crostinis, a small square of goat milk cheese, and pecans. The cheese was super soft and creamy– it spread onto the crostini with ease. This with pecans placed on top was incredible. We also tried the chicken slider that was 4 $ and it was good.
The cocktail menu had some very creative options; however, I was in a dirty martini mood that night. They made a enjoyable dirty martini and used a different olive than most places use — They were unstuffed and a richer green color than the typical olive used in a martini– They might have been Sicilian green olives– don’t quote me on that fact… but they were delicious. I just wish I hadn’t wasted my olive eating on the dirty martinis I had before we got here. I also asked our server if the bartender could make a dirty shirley (my girlfriend and I had been talking about it all night since we saw someone order a Shirley temple earlier in the evening) — and she happily had the bartender make me a much nicer version of one that ended up being delicious.
When we asked for the check our server even brought a small desert to our table and said that it was compliments of the chef and to have a great night. That was a really cool little surprise. All said and done, the experience for me was 5 stars– This doesn’t really have any food factored in to my review so I’ll have to update the review and star rating again once I get a chance to eat a few times here. But for now, I’ll leave it 5 stars until I get back soon.