Thomas Foolery

I love this place. Great place for alcohol milk shakes along with games. I love playing Jenga. One of my favorite place to hangout with my friends.

Definition of a hole in the wall bar with chill vibes. You can enjoy a more adult version of your childhood with the different specialty drinks that all have some of your favorite childhood candy added to them. They do have bottled beer as well. They have a variety of 90’s board games, hopscotch drawn in chalk on the floor, a plinko wall for shots. It’s a really chill place.
I’m not sure if they are closed for good or renovation or what but the last couple times I’ve been there they have sign saying they are temporarily closed. Hopefully it’s not permanent. There’s no TV but who needs entertainment from a screen when you’ve got board games.

Go here! It’s the bar for anyone and everyone! My brother and I took our mother out to dinner and ended up at Thoms for drinks after. It is a super relaxed bar with the friendliest staff. No pretension here! But in the way of drinks and food they’re up to par with the trendiest dives or cocktail bars. Thomas Foolery’s is the place that makes me wish I lived in DC.

This place was so fun. I stopped in by myself to kill an hour and was delighted to find a nostalgic gem of a dive bar. Large beer selection, minimal food, tons of character.

Aaaaamazing everything! The atmosphere, the drinks, the staff… it’s just a very fun, small, chill bar. Definitely try the beer floats!

A fun place with a distinct vibe, Thomas Foolery encourages innocence with a twist of deviance. Offering alcoholic milkshakes, favorite candies from my childhood, and a great selection of local and regional craft brews, the bar does not disappoint. Great for interns and college kids on a budget, the YUP crowd might feel out of place. However if you love candy, board games, and kicking it in t-​shirts with your roommates, this is a grade-​A hangout.

Great place if you wanna hang out with friends over games and a surprisingly wide variety of drinks. Definitely not a typical bar experience, but fun nonetheless.
Had a cider float and tatchos during «angry» hour, tatchos were delicious and the vanilla ice cream was super rich. Bartender was very helpful as well! Will have to try one of their cocktails next time :)

I love this hole in the wall bar. It’s like a grown up version of a candy bar. They have fruity alcoholic cocktails, spiked milkshakes and some food to munch on. There’s also a small candy bar with a your favorite candies. To top it off they have board games you can rent for free while you’re there. Can’t not express how much I love this place!

Small, cozy, good beer selection, booze milkshakes, and you can pay Plinko to get drink prices? I think I like it. They make awesome grilled cheese sandwiches too. Thomas Foolery hosted a fundraiser for us and we had a good time there before heading to other bars. They were great hosts, and the place is really need, good fun and not overpriced.

I really want to like this bar, because the ideas are SO fun and I like a good casual spot. But it doesn’t seem to be well-​executed. I’ve been a few times now, and no one is ever playing games or doing anything otherwise different from any other bar (except maybe some Wii). Also, there always seem to be group events, so it’s sorta awkward to be the odd one out. HOWEVER I will say they have a surprisingly good beer selection for a random bar.

This place was conveniently located about a block from my hotel so clearly my friends and I had to stop by. I really liked the vibe of the place. Very hipster-​ish. There’s a Wii for anyone who is up for being super competitive, a blackboard and chalk for anyone who is in a creative mood, and moooounds of other board games for those who want to challenge their friends in something like Jenga.
Not only is the vibe nice, but the drinks themselves sound really good. My friends and I did a shot with some sour patch kids in it and oh man, they were so good. It didn’t burn like crazy and you even get sour patch kids soaked in vodka to munch on after. GENIUS.
But yes, go here, get drunk, laugh, laugh some more when you beat other people in games, and generally have a wonderful time.

Come here for the vibe.
It’s small.
It’s chill.
Get all cozy and shit.
There’s games.
And CANDY.
Not just a candy bar. A BAR full of candy.
You’ll love it.
Stick around for the music.
Oldies, 80s, 90s.
No Top 40 here, peeps.
Sing and shout and let it all out.
Kidding. Too chill for that.
As the night goes on, play your Plinko right and ice your friends.
For a range of $ 1-​$ 5, it’s totally worth doing.
My friend had two.
Last time I had two I was puking all night in my college dorm.
Cold as ice, bro.
Fact: If I were to open a bar this is exactly what I would open.

It’s a basement bar, but not the cool kind. It’s small, oddly well-​lit, and there is no music. It’s kind of like hanging out in your work break-​room. The bartenders were that special mix of rude and incompetent. It took several minutes to order even though no one was in line. My boyfriend and I ordered a few cookies and the bartender asked «are you trying to put yourselves into a diabetic coma»? Then they forgot to give me my order. Then they realized they were out of what I had ordered.
But, on a positive note, the BF and I are very excited about «angry hour». We’re going to go in and tell that rude bartender some berating expletives in exchange for discounted drinks. Yeah!

I have to go back! Why? I did not get an alcoholic milkshake.
I visited late night on NYE and the place was pack. Despite an overwhelming crowd it was easy to see that his is a fun place. All of the board games from your youth, Mario Cart and even hop scotch are available. Although there was not a full bar they made all basic drinks (and they have Smirnoff Ice!).

We loved this bar!
They had a lot of great games, the best of which was Resistance, which if you’ve never played it should probably just be called The Liar’s Game. There’s a whole plot and it’s critical you ignore it because it is entirely irrelevant. Lie to each other, go. There’s some smart little cards that tie your fate to each other.
Also: Fresh-​baked chocolate chip cookies, milk shakes, and Wii Mario Kart.
I wasn’t sure whether to include this but despite how guy-​ish everything I said up there sounds, there appeared to be a 1:1 gender ratio. Don’t know if it should be surprising in 2014 that girls also like board games and video games but there you have it.

Super tiny, like smaller than a Starbucks, wedged into a basement slice of the row houses in the neighborhood. Has about ten tables? When we walked in, they were all full, and the crowd felt like college seniors or summer interns — young people having a nice time flirting with each other over silly games.
The bartender was SUPER nice, continuing the theme of DC having outstanding bartenders. I waved and said that I was just waiting for my friend. He didn’t pressure me to order anything and said I could ask about anything on the menu. It looked nice to have cookies as a late night option.
It wasn’t my vibe, so we left and went to the Bier Baron. Sorry, your tables were full. And well, I hate to admit it, but I’m not 23 years old anymore. But, if you’re a cute intern hoping to ask another cute intern out on a date, then get all your friends to meet you here. She’ll like it.

As soon as I heard about this bar, I needed to come here. I’ve been here many times, and it never fails to disappoint.
It’s a bit different than your typical bar (smaller, and has much more light than most) but it’s amazing. Their game selection is great, as is their candy and alcohol selection.
They have cookies from the Captain Cookie food truck, so obviously they are amazing. I’m a bit sad though that they stopped using the Big Cheese and starting making their own grilled cheese because it’s really not as good.
They also host charity nights in which guests can guest bartend for a few hours. All of the money that guest makes goes to a charity of their choosing. Such an awesome way to help others.
**Beware that some tables are super rickety and you might spill shots everywhere when playing hungry hungry hippos

3.5 stars
To tell you the truth, I actually had a blast at Thomas Foolery the one time my fiancé and I made our way over. My rating would be a lot higher if it was just based on the amount of fun we had together there. But to be fair to the art of writing reviews, I have to include everything, and this place really does have some growing to do.
I had been wanting to come here for quite a long time, so I was excited to see them listed as one of the participating bars in a pub crawl we were attending. As others have mentioned, this place is way too small for what they do – if you’re going to encourage people to play board games, you need enough space for tables so people can play board games. But moving on, we did manage to get a table and grabbed the super-​duper old school edition of Trivial Pursuit that they had behind the counter. Huge plus that you don’t have to pay to borrow the games — all you need to do is trade in your driver’s license until you return the game.
As expected from a place evoking all kinds of childhood fun and games, the staff is all incredibly friendly and everything about the place has a fun, tongue-​in-​cheek vibe. The food is all childish in nature (grilled cheese, tater tots, and candy), they serve adult milkshakes, and there are fresh-​baked cookies. Since we were there on a pub crawl, we went with the deals that were offered to us by the event, which gave us a dollar off of all bottled beers. We tried the tater tots, and they were fine but kind of meh. I would hope the grilled cheeses are a lot better than that was.
My other major frustration with this place is that they have a ton of awesome beers and malt beverages, but not a single one on tap. I know there is little space for a tap, but I can buy bottles and bring them to my house if I want to. Next time we’ll need to try one of the adult milkshakes or cocktails to see if those are worth their salt. The drinks look pretty great but pricey, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m more than happy to pay a little extra for the experience, but they at least have to be good.
Overall, we’ll definitely be back. Way better than Board Room, which is more expensive, requires cash for the games, and ends up more like a frat party by the end of the night, but needs some work. Fingers crossed next time will be better!

Not the childish Tom Foolery, Thomas Foolery has all the sophistication of an English tea room… if an English tea room were loaded with candy, booze, and video games. Tons of beer, snacks, comfort food, sugar loaded candy and a strange assortment of cocktails that are served DIY and often have a classic candy component.
Oddly, it’s one of the few places on earth I got asked «so why you taking pictures?» I take a camera everywhere and I was just taking photos of my friends… but I guess that was enough to freak out some young local patron. That Friday night, it’s wasn’t jam packed but just packed enough. Aside from that one freaked out girl by my camera, everyone else was *super* friendly (staff and customers alike).

If you like Big Cheese sandwiches and Captain Cookie and the Milkman cookies/​ice cream sandwiches, beer (plus wine and some nips), and games, you’ll like Thomas Foolery. It’s cute and bright inside, with a super friendly staff.
I actually did not like Big Cheese sandwiches, until I had them today, and my caprese grilled cheese was really good. I had a beer float, which is fairly hard to mess up. The whole premise is that you can play games (hopscotch, Mario Kart, various board games), while drinking and eating. Basically, it takes you back to being a kid, but with alcohol.
Thomas Foolery is really cute and fun, and I hope it succeeds.