Colony Club (Petworth)
3118 Georgia Ave NW
Ratings
Ambiance: 5/5
Tea: 3/5
Noise: 4/5 (5/5 during the day, 3/5 on weekends/evenings)
Service: 4/5
Seating: 4/5
Hours: 4/5
Wifi: 5/5
Food: 2/5
Power Outlets: 2/5
Description
Simply put, this place is dope.
It’s almost disorienting to walk in on a weekday and realize that half the patrons are on their laptops and appear to be programming. Like, did I make a wrong turn back there and somehow wind up in Seattle? Then, you realize that if there’s one thing brogrammers know how to find, it’s good wifi. And sure enough, the wifi here beats basically every other DC coffee shop I can think of, and it’s not even close. Not that their wifi is incredible, the bar for good wifi is just really, really low in this city.
At 5pm, the espresso machine shuts down and the bar opens up (you can still order tea and a couple types of coffee in the evenings). Their beer/wine offerings are limited but top-notch, and they make fancy cocktails if you’re into that sort of thing.
Nice combination of high-top, table, and couch seating. They’ve also got an outdoor patio out back, which they share with the bar and the pizza place next door.
Oh, and they have a ping pong table upstairs!
What to watch out for
Lots of special events, and sometimes the place will just be closed for an evening (for a private event) or for a few days around a holiday. So best practices on weekends definitely include checking their calendar before you leave the house so that you don’t show up to a locked door like I have on multiple occasions (including a 2nd date!). And if it’s the week of July 4th or something like that, you should probably just give them a call to make sure they’re open since their closing might not make it onto the calendar.
Sometimes, they have some really awesome live music in the evenings, but this also makes the place quite loud if you were hoping to have a conversation.
Seating can be hard to come by (especially on the patio) at peak times (Thursday evening, weekends during the day).
You might want to eat before you get here. They always have a couple of tasty baked goods during the day, but otherwise food offerings are pretty limited and meh. And the pizza next door is also pretty meh in my opinion.
I’m just not gonna talk about the tea because I can’t say anything good about it, but I love this place too much to say anything bad about it.
Coffee Shop Snob 