Welcome to Episode 209 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast!
This time around, we hang out with Deke Dunne (@deke_dc). He’s the bar director at Allegory, a speakeasy-style, high-end concept bar tucked away behind the Radical Library in the lobby of the Eaton Hotel in downtown Washington, DC. He’s here to walk us through how he and his team use a surrealist mural, the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the experience of civil rights pioneer Ruby Bridges as a flavorful storytelling experience that has the power to move guests to tears.
In this eye-opening conversation with Bar Director Deke Dunne of Allegory (@allegory_dc), some of the topics we discuss include:
How Deke transitioned from a life in politics to a life behind bars, starting by working security at perhaps DC’s most successful pop-up EVER and then making the switch to bartending.
What a surrealist Victorian novel by Lewis Carrol has to do with Ruby Bridges, a civil rights pioneer who was the first black child to desegregate a white school here in the US, and why the artwork at Allegory mixes those stories together and puts them on display.
Of course, we talk cocktails and drink development, explaining how Deke and his team use flavors to tell stories. And this might sound cut-and-dry, but when we explain how rum, bourbon, oxidized sherry, banana liqueur, and a purple tuber all came to reside in a Kefir-finished milk punch, your mind will be blown.
We also necessarily dig into the tricky balance that a bartender needs to walk when engaging with guests about historically charged and culturally sensitive subject matter. It’s possible to do it really well, but there’s also a lot of work that occurs behind the scenes to strike the right balance.
Along the way, we discuss the role of hospitality in a concept bar, why a Ramos Gin Fizz is like a baseball bat donut, what’s next for Deke and Allegory in 2022, and much, much more.
This episode’s featured cocktail is the Cancha, which is short for Canchánchara. To make it, you’ll need:
1.5 oz of white or light rum
½ oz Lime Juice
½ oz of 2:1 honey syrup
Combine your ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, give em a good, hard shake, then strain into a highball glass or a double rocks glass over ice, top with a splash of sparkling water or club soda, and enjoy.
If you’re following along at home, you’ll recognize the Cancha cocktail as a Daiquiri made with honey syrup and lengthened by a dealer’s choice amount of carbonated water. It’s a drink that’s popular in both Trinidad and Cuba, where rum and lime are a very popular combo, and for some reason it seems to have a more medicinal heritage than the classic daiquiri. Perhaps that’s from the honey syrup, perhaps it’s that late Victorian association between carbonated water and health benefits, or maybe it’s just because the Cancha is a feel-good cocktail.
This drink can be found on Allegory’s “Passage to the Somewhat Familiar” section of their cocktail menu, along with a Cold Brew Negroni and a Tequila drink called the Infante because sometimes when you’re surrounded by surrealist murals, you need to ease into happy hour with a drink that makes sense. From there, it’s a choose your own adventure, and the possibilities may very well lead you down your own mixological rabbit hole.
If you find yourself in Washington, DC, you need to check out this gorgeous hotel and grab a drink with Deke and his team at Allegory. If you walk in the front of the hotel, you’ll continue past the front desk into the library, then turn right through an unmarked door into the speakeasy.
The following gallery features a scenes from muralist Erik Thor Sandberg, as well as some of the cocktails you can enjoy at Allegory. All photos are courtesy of Kimberly Kong.
This episode was made possible with editing and sound design by Samantha Reed, a radical cocktail-and-civil-rights mashup courtesy of Deke Dunne and the team at the Allegory bar in the Eaton hotel here in Washington, DC, and a little bit of interview magic by yours truly. This has been a Modern Bar Cart production, copyright 2021.
This episode is also brought to you by Near Country Provisions. If you live in the Mid-Atlantic and want to enjoy ethically raised (and delicious) meat from local farmers delivered to your door every month, then you need Near Country in your life.
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