Opening tonight is H Street Country Club, the much anticipated, long awaited indoor mini-golf course/Mexican eatery in Northeast. We’ve heard rumors about the DC-themed holes bordering on two years now. Chalk up their logo, which says “Est. 2008,” to overzealousness. Even the hard hat tour in February 2009 showed a place still in development; there wasn’t a blade of fake grass in sight. Last night we had the chance to be among the first to test out the course, margarita in hand, at a press preview.

What ended up as a 9-hole course upstairs is heavy on artistic flare and inside the beltway humor. Instead of dodging rotating windmill blades, you’ll time your swing around a K Street Lego Lawyer swinging his briefcase on Hole 3. You’ll find on Hole 6 the de rigueur loop-de-loop fashioned as the Springfield Mixing Bowl, complete with a ramp to nowhere and wrecked autos to hold up [golf ball] traffic. Tap the ball through the legs of an obese meter maid with his pants falling down, around a zombie like FDR, or between the Lincoln Theater and Ben’s Chili Bowl.

It’s an unforgiving 22 par course, with most holes set at an unrealistic par 2. Three are par 3 holes, including the most interesting and elegant of them, the Lincoln Memorial at Hole 4. You’ll need a straight, firm, lucky shot to travel the length of the glassy reflecting pool and up the impossibly steep first set of “stairs” to the hole. But you’ll probably ricochet off the second staircase and bounce back to the bottom. Over and over and over again. Same thing with our friend, the meter reader. He’s standing on a cement sidewalk, not Astroturf, so the ball’s going to keep on rolling until you put it in the hole. Mini golf costs $7 per player. There’s also shuffleboard and billiards downstairs ($15/table/hour at all times), 50 cent Skee-Ball and Big Buck Hunter while you wait to tee off.