One of the most anticipated restaurant openings of 2019 waited until the last possible moment to fulfill its title: Reveler’s Hour, from the team behind the Michelin-starred Tail Up Goat, made its debut on New Year’s Eve with a mere seven hours to go.
Reveler’s Hour extrapolates on owners Jill Tyler, Jon Sybert, and Bill Jensen’s favorite Tail Up Goat elements—pasta and wine—in what they describe as a more casual, wallet-conscious execution. The restaurant still has plenty of fine dining markers, reminders of the owners’ days at Komi and Little Serow: entrees running $25-27, a wine list that spans 50+ options, high demand for tables. But the emphasis is on fancy comfort food and carbs, with the twists of salt, sea, and local meat and vegetables that have become chef Sybert’s markers.
While Tail Up Goat’s high-end Mediterranean menu generally features three noodle dishes, Sybert devoted the entrée section to a new crop of seven pastas.
“Pastas serve a very similar purpose to what is one of the main catalysts for Bill’s passion for wine—the idea that they hold enough tradition that there is a story to be told,” says Sybert. “They invoke a more convivial dining experience simply by being a comfort food. A bowl of pasta and a bottle of wine can be a pretty fulfilling and life-affirming experience when shared with a friend.”
A meal at Reveler’s might begin with snacks and small plates: homemade sourdough and fishy butter or a pork liver pate and wine-soaked raisins on toast or kale and radicchio salad in creamy anchovy dressing. Pasta options—rolled in-house—range from sea island red peas and collards on Cassarecce to beefy Capunti with grilled carrots to thin strips of Tagliolini in uni-tomato sauce and crispy anchovy. Many of the dishes will incorporate seared veggies and seafood off the restaurant’s wood-fired grill.
As for the wines, beverage director Jensen kicks off his first seasonal rotation with dozens of wines divided by region and themes. Bottles come from the Roman wine route, California, the D.C. area, and Provence, France, and each one is available by the glass (starting at $12).
To help diners figure out where to start, Jensen created a winemakers guide to pair with the list—a book featuring profile and trivia cards about the individual producers they feature. (They run deep: A card for Gideon Beinstock explains that a glass of his $45 “Taken From Granite” cabernet sauvignon began at the winemaking doomsday cult Fellowship of Friends in the 1990 before he reclaimed the bottles decades later.)
Wine is also the spirit behind the restaurant’s name, a nod to an ancient Greek drinking song (from Thomas Moore’s Odes of Anacreon):
Sculptor, wouldst thou glad my soul,
Grave for me an ample bowl,
Worthy to shine in hall or bower,
When spring-time brings the reveller’s hour.
“The Ancient Greeks were among the first cultures to put wine at the center of their ritual life,” Jensen says. “Drinking wine was a catalyst for learned discourse and spending time in the company of friends. We ultimately hope Reveler’s Hour serves the same kind of purpose for our guests.”
In addition to wine, there is also a full menu of lighter cherry cocktails, fizzy ciders and negronis, and DIY aperitif spritzes.
The restaurant again worked with Edit Lab at Streetsense to make a sleek open dining room with mint tile and staggered seating options. Shelves of wine bottles take the place of art around the room, a wide bar splits the space in two, and a cut wall gives glimpses into the kitchen.
For Tyler, who is the service director, the proximity to Tail Up Goat—one back alley away—speaks to the owners’ love for Adams Morgan. Apart from the convenience factor, Tyler says the neighborhood holds a lot of history for her and Sybert (the pair are married).
She had her first “big girl apartment” on Lanier Place (the same street as Tail Up), they’ve lived here for years, and Jensen is close by, as are many of their staff. “The only rule we had going into a second restaurant was that it had to be in Adams Morgan,” says Tyler. “We needed to give ourselves a framework early on to continue to invest in the neighborhood.”
Brunch is on the way, as is dinner service seven nights a week.
Reveler’s Hour is located at 1775 Columbia Road NW in Adams Morgan. Hours are 5:30 p.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday (kitchen closes at 10 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday (kitchen closes at 11 p.m.).
