Floreria Atlántico

Floreria Atlantico is the hidden bar that occupies the lower level of the Brasero Atlantico firehouse at 1066 Wisconsin Avenue NW, accessible through a concealed door in the restaurant above. The concept is the Georgetown expression of the Buenos Aires bar of the same name, which Renato “Tato” Giovannoni created in Buenos Aires and which has consistently appeared on the World’s 50 Best Bars lists since its founding. Bringing Floreria Atlantico to Georgetown is not a franchise expansion in the commercial sense; it is the translation of a specific artistic vision in bartending to a new city.

Giovannoni’s background is unusual for a bartender: he studied theater and botany before entering the hospitality world, and both disciplines are visible in the Floreria concept. The theatrical dimension appears in the bar’s stagecraft: the hidden entrance, the setting that is conceived as a mise-en-scene rather than merely a room with bottles, and the cocktails that are presentations with a narrative as much as they are drinks. The botanical dimension appears in the ingredients: fresh flowers, herbs, roots, and the South American botanical ingredients that the spirits of Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay are built from.

The spirit selection at Floreria Atlantico is organized around the South American tradition: the Fernet-Branca and the Argentine amaros that are consumed in Buenos Aires at a rate that no other country approaches, the pisco of Peru and Chile, the singani of Bolivia, and the cachaca of Brazil. These spirits, which the American cocktail bar typically addresses as novelties rather than as a serious category, form the foundation of the Floreria bar program in the same way that scotch or bourbon forms the foundation of a spirits-focused American bar.

The Georgetown hidden bar tradition, of which Floreria Atlantico is the most internationally pedigreed example, produces the experience of discovery that the nightlife industry lost when every bar became visible and searchable. Finding the entrance is part of the evening. Hours run from 6pm Tuesday through Sunday with late closing on weekend nights. Tato Giovannoni’s cocktail philosophy, which he has written about and spoken about in the global bartending community, emphasizes the terroir of spirits in the same way that wine sommeliers discuss the terroir of wine. South American spirits, which are made from ingredients that do not grow in the Northern Hemisphere, have specific flavor profiles that reflect the geography of their origin: the high-altitude sweetness of Bolivian singani made from Muscat grapes grown at 5,000 feet, the coastal salinity of Chilean pisco, the tropical fruit esters of Brazilian cachaca made from fresh sugarcane juice. The cocktails at Floreria Atlantico are built on this understanding of spirits as agricultural products that carry geographic information, which is a different approach from the cocktail bar that treats spirits as interchangeable flavoring agents.