COCKTAILING: Mix Downtown

Mix Downtown's Web site

I went to Mix on Thursday for happy hour. This place is undeniably sexy. It has a sleek, modern and sophisticated feel to it. It is a complete singles heaven. Sexy as it may be, it lacks a bit of substance in the staff. The first thing you notice is the dim, swanky atmosphere. The place is an interesting mixture of cold industrial and rich swank. It combines cold concrete, warm wooden accents, rich velvety textures, leather and stainless steel. When you walk in you immediately go upstairs toward a mirrored wall of candles. It opens up to a choice of the indoor lounge to your right or the open patio to the left. The large patio is perfect for summer nights but it does have heat lamps and fire pits for when it gets chilly. There is plenty of seating but also plenty of room to mingle. Next to it is one of the two bars. The bar is gray with brushed steel stools. There is a small alcove at one end of the bar with couches, a flat screen TV, a window overlooking L Street and velvety privacy curtains that can be drawn for privacy. The indoor lounge is set up so that along one wall is the bar, along the opposite wall is a series of three nooks with leather couches and privacy curtains that can be drawn for an intimate party. The large middle area is all velvet couches, chairs, tables and several oversized ottomans. Let's get to the food and drinks. Happy hour here is great. It goes from 4-7 and offers half price small plates and several drink specials. My friend Pam and I both tried wine after the bartender informed us he still had never made one of their specialty cocktails since they opened a week into January! I had the J Lohr Merlot and she had the Cupcake Sauvignon Blanc. Neither of us was impressed with our wine. We decided to order food. We had several questions for our server but although she was very cute and polite she didn't know anything about the dishes on the menu. We settled on the beet salad, ahi poke, macaroni and cheese and the cheese plate. The beet salad was fair. It was served with mache, crumbled cheese and walnuts. There wasn't anything outstanding about the salad but it wasn't bad at all. It had a bit of a kick which could have been clove. I thought I tasted wasabi at one point and looking at the menu I see now it was horseradish. We dug into the mac and cheese after that. It was short little tube pasta with cheese sauce and topped with an herbed breadcrumb topping. It was pretty good. Not spectacular but pretty darned tasty. It was not too rich or cheesy but it really hit the spot. The poke was next. This was my favorite dish. It was absolutely delicious except for a tiny, tiny tinge of fishiness. It was standard poke with soy dressing served with seaweed and accompanied by house made taro chips that were good but too oily. Finally the cheese plate. It came with 3 cheeses but our server couldn't tell us exactly what they were and she mixed up the order of mild to pungent. The first was a soft bleu, the second a hard cheese and the last a creamy mild cheese. They were all very good. They were served with dry figs, apricots, cherries, honey, bread and almonds. We drank three happy hour martinis each during our meal. The vodka was Skyy. For some reason I was charged $6.75 for mine instead of $6.50. I couldn't complain since our total bill (excluding the two wines) was only about $61! There were lots and lots of good looking professionals. This was a 30 and up crowd and a fairly attractive crowd too. I will definitely be going back for many more happy hours.