The Bar at the Ritz-Carlton

The bartender with the salt and pepper hair makes a mean mojito! Delicious!

Best bartenders in town! Jason and Chris will excite you with numerous unique cocktail concoctions. They will not only make you laugh but also tantalize your taste buds.

$ 25 GLASS of red wine. REALLY. And not even a Jose Andres to go with it. LOUD bar area, disappearing waitresses. I could go on but why try when they don’t. I guess this is the case when you have a hotel audience held relatively captive by the DC winter.
Never again.

The Ritz Bar is nice for a quiet escape. The drinks aren’t particularly special but they are certainly good. The beer selection is pretty limited but they do have solid choices. The staff is of course quite attentive and nice. The main reason to go here (assuming you’re not staying here) would be for a moment of respite or to facilitate conversation without much background noise; otherwise it’s not really worth a dedicated trip. It certainly has much more of a business/​hotel vibe than the Ritz Bar just down the street in Georgetown (which has a much livelier scene.

Came for a drink. Good but not special. Great atmosphere.

Wonderful ambiance, great drinks, perfect staff. Everything is great and I can’t wait to go back. Yes its a little more expensive than some bar but you get what you pay for.

We had a couple meals and drinks here and it was just ok. I think they overcharged us but didn’t argue it. We were bored one night and they actually gave us a board game which we played at the bar, so that was different.

excellent service. stuffy atmosphere, and they close at midnight on weekdays.

Pretty lame. Typical Marriott bar with elevated prices, but the drunk Young Republican yahoos brought it down notch. Attentive staff, blurry Piers Morgan TV, and single people staring into their mobile devices. Cliched marble counters.
HE double-​matchsticks. Except that the barkeep rounded my bill down to the next lower dollar. That’s cool.

As a frequent guest I use this as my «safe» choice whenever I’m too lazy to walk elsewhere on M Street. The menu is short but I’ve yet to be disappointed by anything. Their mixed drinks are actually good, and this is coming from a beer guy who hates cocktails. I tried one with muddled mint and strawberries — had some kick and wasn’t girly despite the pink color. Food is decent given the price; the butternut squash soup I had last week was unusual but I admittedly liked it. There are healthy choices available both in appetizer and entrée form.
This spot is fine if you’re a guest of the hotel and just need to unwind. A good alternative to the expensive West End place attached to the lobby.

Different bartender last Thursday and I am a big Ritz bar fan again. Outstanding service this time, the kind that shows you that you are at a Ritz. The martinis and the mouthwatering truffle fries (YUM) could turn any frown upside down. Thank you Ritz-​Carlton!

A fancy bar at a fancy hotel. Lots of transient businessmen dining or drinking, mainly alone and reading their blackberries. TV’s tuned into sports or business news. Depressing.

Nice bar but it seems just like any other fancy bar at any hotel. It is a nice hotel and i guess for a hotel bar it does the trick… but i dont know, i would rather be somewhere that is more welcoming than a hotel bar. I even think the W is way better.

Some things, like watching a movie or having sex, should – if possible – not be done alone.
Drinking is not one of them.
Drinking alone happens all the time – even to normal people. For instance, I came home yesterday and, with a home-​cooked meal, had a Sam Adams Oktoberfest.
However: sometimes the soul craves something more than the mundane. Sometimes a man feels like putting on a tie, going out, and having a good time at a place that is… not McFadden’s (West End, DC). And sometimes a man might feel like having a drink or two alone at a bar, just like a character out of a novel or movie.
In the interests of NOT looking like a down and out drunk, however, it’s imperative to choose a nice bar – a bar like the one at the Ritz-​Carlton, Washington, DC.
Crystal glasses. Leather seats. Clean bars. Perfect low lighting. Great service. A bartender that calls you Mr. _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​and knows when exactly to ask you for another drink.
I had an Americano (made of Campari), then I had a dirty martini. Excellent. Then, friends arrived and we made it a small party. Girls in dresses; guys buttoned-​up. Tanqueray Ten and tonic. A Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
About fifty dollars later, I was riding a substantial but sophisticated buzz. Leaving the Ritz – tie loosened, shirt cuffs rolled up – the faint summer humidity and smell of the city greeting me, I called it a night.