Dishonesty Listening Bar at Silver Lyan Is Like Home, but Better

Replacing a professional experience at home is rarely representative of the real thing. For most people, making your own drinks doesn’t taste the same as having them in a professional cocktail bar. The same goes for listening to vinyl. You can have a good set of speakers, but it’ll likely pale in comparison to that of an audiophile’s intensely-curated setup. But what if there was a space where you could go to have the best of both?

That was certainly my experience at Dishonesty Listening Bar at Silver Lyan, which is accessed through the gym at Riggs Washington DC in Penn Quarter. Previously a ritzy reservation-only space geared towards private rentals, Dishonesty is now a pop-up concept that will be open until January 25. Inside, patrons will no longer find the plush red chairs and stunning table that once anchored the space, but rather a series of high-top bar seating, a microbar in the middle of the room, a turntable and powerful speakers pumping out a curated selection of vinyl. Critically, however, the Twin Peaks-inspired carpet is still present.

“[It’s] a super unusual space,” Lyan’s assistant general manager Alex Leidy tells me over Zoom. “It’s something we’ve been lucky enough to have — that’s sort of our combination private events space for larger parties but a very malleable space.” Leidy talks about Golden Gai in the Kabukicho neighborhood of Tokyo, where there are dozens of tiny bars, many of which have only a few seats. “They survive by being incredibly specific and hyper-niche,” Leidy says. Think bars that offer a curated whiskey edit while showing horror movies or one that only plays “Czech funk records from the ’70s.”

These Are the 10 Best Cocktail Bars in DC

DC is a drinking town with a political problem

After settling on using the space as a listening bar, something Leidy states is popular at the moment, they collaborated with longtime friend DJ Trev Ski to create an eclectic mix of 20 records. Leidy was hesitant to reveal the complete selection but teased “everything from super cultish, adored hip-hop jazz from the ’90s to Steely Dan.” Sure enough, when I headed into Dishonesty in early December, the funky tones of “Black Cow” were floating through the air, filling up the space accordingly as I listened to the whole of Aja.

The intimacy of the space will stand out first and foremost. The space only seats about 10 people and is undoubtedly a great date spot or a place to sit and have a conversation, as I did with my buddy throughout the evening. Being in Dishonesty offered a similar experience to sitting around at home and catching up with someone over a playlist and a drink, only it’s the best sound system you’ve heard and some of the best drinks you’ll ever have. Perhaps it’s that Twin Peaks carpet, but sitting in the space — combined with a good dose of Steely Dan — I felt out of time. I even remarked to my companion that the only thing missing was a smokey haze; in a sense, it’s a bar that would have fit right in during the ’60s or ’70s.

On the drink side, Dishonesty is collaborating with House of Suntory, offering a chance to taste various expressions from their brands; diehard whiskey nerds will jump at the chance to try Yamazaki, Hakushu and Hibiki. The menu is a little less expansive than what you’ll find at Silver Lyan, but that’s by design and reflects the intimacy of the room. The options were fitting, given the darker interior and perceived smokey vibes. The Old Fashioned was excellent, as all Silver Lyan Old Fashioneds are, but the Suntory highball I had was equally as tasty. The bill arrived alongside HI-CHEW, a perfect nod to the Golden Gai origins of the space.

Constraint and specificity can feel antithetical to the creative process. Anyone with big ideas doesn’t like to feel fenced in. But that can lead to better ideas and bold executions like Dishonesty. “There’s something really fun about stripping it back to this tiny room with a very specific menu and 10 to 12 people at a time,” Leidy says. “Back to the point of the elegance, of the basics of it.”