July 1, 2013
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
It’s no surprise to learn that Georgetown — which was originally established as a tobacco port in Maryland forty years before Washington, D.C. became a city — is the oldest neighborhood in the District. With cobblestone streets and brick houses still intact from the country’s earliest days, it certainly looks the part. But although many of the structures themselves have remained the same, the establishments within them come and go. Case in point: just weeks ago, the Wisconsin Avenue tavern Third Edition, a fixture since 1969, abruptly closed its doors. What was once a popular bar will soon be a new Mexican restaurant.
In Washington’s constantly evolving bar and restaurant scene, Martin’s Tavern is an 80-year-old rarity. This year is in fact a major anniversary for the elegant, but friendly bar, which first 
opened its doors in 1933, thus becoming the District’s first legitimate drinking place following the Prohibition Era. Over its 80-year history, it has served politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle, local and visiting athletes, and just about every Georgetown student and professor currently alive. It has also hosted eleven American presidents; that’s every one of them since Truman, excluding our current commander in chief. “We’re hoping to get him in here before the end of his term,” says a bartender.
It probably says something about their personalities that while Teddy Roosevelt was drawn to the rustic pomp of Old Angler’s Inn, John F. Kennedy preferred a cozy booth at Martin’s. In fact, according to a handy “Guide to the Presidential Booths” (provided by the management), Kennedy is associated with two booths: one half-booth, called “the rumble seat,” where he would take breakfast alone after attending church, and one regular booth where he proposed to his future wife, Jackie. Patrons may be hard-pressed to find a better spot for a date than the booth where the Kennedys officially got engaged, but on the chance that it is already full, the decidedly less romantic Lyndon Johnson booth or Richard Nixon booth may still be available.
In addition to its ties to the American political scene over the better half of the twentieth century and beyond, Martin’s also has clear links to the world of sports. William “Billy” Martin, the son of the bar’s original owner and manager, was a three-sport professional athlete, who achieved what was perhaps his greatest success as a shortstop for the World Series Champion Boston Braves of 1914. Various team photos, including a shot of that championship roster, adorn the walls of a quiet back room.
History takes center stage at Martin’s. The shiny wooden finish on the bar may be new, but one has the sense that the place looks much as it did upon its opening. Still, the food and drinks are worthy of their venerable surroundings. The kitchen serves up a solid crab cake, golden and crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. “Billy’s Happy Hour,” offered every weekday from 4 to 7 ($2 Select Domestics, $3 margaritas and half price appetizers) is one of the better deals in Georgetown, if not the entire city.
In this city of high turnover, both in terms of population and of local spots for food and drink, there are fewer and fewer “Essential D.C. Spots,” places that one must visit in order to be able to properly claim status as a D.C. resident. Along with a precious few others (Old Ebbitt Grill, The Monocle, and perhaps Clyde’s), Martin’s is old school D.C. at its finest. It epitomizes the District in a way that few other spots can.
