The Sidecar Bar & Grille

It's Where We Drink

by Will Dean

When Adam Ritter, co-owner of The Sidecar Bar & Grille, searched through a Germantown warehouse for bar essentials, he found something that most would overlook: a trove of plastic barbershop combs. Ritter decided they'd make fantastic drink garnishes—but he had to create one first.

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He thought about that weird blue stuff barbers use to disinfect their hair-parting instruments and came up with Barbicide (the blue stuff's real name), a mixture of citrus Stoli, Triple Sec, melon liquor, orange juice and cranberry juice. Served in a martini glass complete with a comb, the drink tastes kind of like Gatorade Frost.

Mixed drinks with unusual garnishes fit well in a bar that boasts other quirky combos. Daily Miller High Life specials coexist with a draft selection that leans toward craft brews like Yards and Stoudt's; patrons can sip a Colt 45 while enjoying an order of glazed wild boar ribs. (Fun Fact: Ritter's currently talking with a printer to create Louis Vuitton-patterned 40-ounce bags, so even malt liquor drinkers can sip in style.)

The clientele is similarly mixed, with people who grew up in the neighborhood and young professionals who recently bought houses in the area. "That's what makes my wheels turn," says Ritter. "You can have a guy who grew up around here drinking a Pabst sitting next to a gay guy drinking a Chimay ... having a real conversation with each other."