Emily Brown spent seven years dreaming up Shaw's perfect neighborhood bar. Eebee's is it.

Emily Brown spent seven years dreaming up Shaw's perfect neighborhood bar. Eebee's is it.

The place has been open less than a week and the regulars are already forming. Eebee's Corner Bar, which opened November 1 at 1840 6th Street NW, is the kind of room that feels broken in before you've sat down. Leather booths. Family photos covering the wall. A vintage Marlboro sign glowing above the front bar, which owner Emily Larkin Brown spotted while foraging for furniture and bought on the spot, non-negotiable.

Brown is not a first-time bartender who decided to open a bar on a whim. She spent years as beverage director at Andy's Pizza, one of DC's more quietly beloved spots, and before that worked as a server and bartender for long enough to understand exactly what most DC bars get wrong. Too studied. Too on-trend. Too interested in being photographed. "I want Eebee's to be the kind of bar where the bartender knows the three things you like to drink," she says. "Where you can come in on your best day or your worst and feel welcome."

After a three-year struggle to put the financing together, wrangle permits, and bootstrap construction, she opened Eebee's Corner Bar on November 1, 2025, to the warm embrace of the Shaw community. The name itself is a small private joke: Eebee's is a play on her initials.

A bar that answers only to itself

Shaw has no shortage of ambition right now. The neighborhood has absorbed wine bars, natural wine haunts, Korean fried chicken counters, and cocktail programs that require a glossary. What it did not have, until this month, was a place that simply wanted to be there for you on a Tuesday. Brown always dreamed of opening a place where the bartender greets you by name, and the regulars down the block bring a small Christmas present to the staff who take care of them. Eebee's is a corner bar in Shaw where you can get Miller High Life on tap or a martini, and the cheeseburger is better than it needs to be.

The bar channels some of Brown's favorite New York institutions, like JG Mellon and Corner Bistro. Neither of those places will ever appear on a 'best of' list, and that is exactly their power. The DNA is correct: a room that belongs to its neighborhood, not to a publicist's pitch deck.

Brown designed Eebee's with the aid of her mother, Barbara Dolan Brown. She spotted the vintage lighted Marlboro sign that graces the front bar while foraging for dining room furniture. She asked whether it was for sale. 'If we get it down for you, you are buying it whether or not it works,' she recalled the proprietor replying. It works. It hangs there now like a certificate of authenticity.

The food is not an afterthought

In her studio apartment's kitchen, Brown spent months crafting the menu. That shows. She spent more than a year perfecting the turkey club alone, from the layering to the amount of salt on the tomatoes to buttering the bread before adding mayo. There is nothing fast-casual about that level of commitment to a sandwich.

The eight-ounce cheeseburger has already drawn comparisons to DC's best. Other stars of the menu include the shrimp cocktail and turkey club. More importantly, fried saltines accompany the crustaceans, an invention straight from Brown's own kitchen. Most of the mains are shareable and reasonably priced between $18 and $25.

On the drinks side, the approach is similarly unpretentious and equally considered. Brown is highlighting 'things that remind you of your grandparents,' like a Rusty Nail, 'an ode to some of my older relatives', with blended Scotch and Drambuie. The kitchen serves its elevated pub grub menu until 2 AM.

An O's bar in Nats territory

One more thing. Brown is from Baltimore, and she is not hiding it. Throughout Eebee's, there are subtle, and not so subtle, hints of Brown's Baltimore allegiance. It has been passed down through generations, from her grandfather to her father to her. It began with the annual practice of skipping school on opening day and continued through adulthood, even when the Nationals came to town in 2005. An Orioles bar in Washington has a certain stubborn integrity to it. "It's all baseball," Brown says, "but clearly it leans O's heavy."

Brown plans to add more than 20 seats when she opens the outdoor patio, which will have a newly installed drink rail, similar to what DC's Pearl Street Oyster Bar does. Until then, the 73-seat interior is doing just fine on its own.

Shaw's corner at 6th and S has found its anchor. "If this fails, it will not be because I didn't try hard enough," Brown says of her leap into pub ownership. From everything the room suggests right now, failing is not the direction this is going.

Sources

• Eebee's Corner Bar official website
• Washingtonian: 'Eebee's Is the Classic Neighborhood Bar DC Needs Right Now,' November 14, 2025
• Hill Rag: 'Why DC Can't Get Enough Of Eebee's Corner Bar'
• The Banner: 'How a D.C. bar owner's love of the Orioles shines in enemy territory'
• DC Beer Show podcast with Emily Brown, March 2025