Located at the corner of East Grace and North Fourth streets, the space has room to serve around 55. (Mike Platania photo)
A downtown bar is emerging from a nearly four-year slumber with a new twist on its old concept.
Earlier this month, Rappahannock Restaurant Group opened Session at 318 E. Grace St. The new spot replaced Rapp Session, which RRG had operated there from 2016 until 2020.
RRG is a subsidiary of the nearly 125-year-old Rappahannock Oyster Co., which distributes oysters from its three farms in Topping, Chincoteague and Yorktown all over the world. It continues to operate its namesake restaurant next door at 320 E. Grace St., which debuted in 2012.
Though Rapp Session closed during the pandemic, the restaurant group held onto the space and used it for private events in recent years. General Manager Patrick Tanner said the event space did well seasonally, but a lack of late-night cocktail bars downtown eventually led them to convert it into Session.
“There aren’t a lot of places that stay open late anymore post-pandemic, and especially not in the downtown corridor. We’re kind of a duck out here as far as that goes,” Tanner said. “When I get off of work at 11 p.m. or midnight, there’s nowhere to go, and that showed me that there was a need.”
Whereas Rapp Session had both a full food menu and a small market area, Tanner said Session is focused more on classic drinks with modest prices: the average cocktail on Session’s menu is $9, and glasses of beer and wine are between $4 and $6.
“We had somebody say, ‘You know, it’s so nice to see a menu with cocktails that are below $15,’” Tanner recalled. “And that’s because we want it to be approachable. We wanted to focus on the traditional (drinks) and do it really well.”
Tanner said the broader infrastructure of RRG – which includes Rappahannock next door, as well as restaurants in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Charleston, South Carolina, plus a forthcoming spot in Dulles International Airport that’s set to open next year – allows them to keep prices down.
“We’re lucky…we don’t have a lot of the expenses that a single bar does. So we’re using that to our advantage and passing that along in the prices,” Tanner said.
Session’s food menu is made up of small snacks like marinated olives and almonds ($7), blue fish dip ($8) and shrimp cocktail ($12), as well as half-dozen orders of oysters ($15).
The bar’s soft opening was in early December, and it’s now open from 5 p.m. until midnight on weeknights and 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekends.
Other cocktail-focused bars to recently arrive in the region include Fan Boy, a concept from Sabai’s owners at 2713 W. Broad St.; The Emerald Lounge, a tropical cocktail bar from the Jasper team in Union Hill; rum-focused spot Sidecar Cocktail Lounge in Midlothian; and Harry’s at Hofheimer, which replaced The HofGarden concept in Scott’s Addition. A bartender from Gwarbar also recently rolled out Aces High Bar Services, a “mobile cocktail lounge.”
Located at the corner of East Grace and North Fourth streets, the space has room to serve around 55. (Mike Platania photo)
A downtown bar is emerging from a nearly four-year slumber with a new twist on its old concept.
Earlier this month, Rappahannock Restaurant Group opened Session at 318 E. Grace St. The new spot replaced Rapp Session, which RRG had operated there from 2016 until 2020.
RRG is a subsidiary of the nearly 125-year-old Rappahannock Oyster Co., which distributes oysters from its three farms in Topping, Chincoteague and Yorktown all over the world. It continues to operate its namesake restaurant next door at 320 E. Grace St., which debuted in 2012.
Though Rapp Session closed during the pandemic, the restaurant group held onto the space and used it for private events in recent years. General Manager Patrick Tanner said the event space did well seasonally, but a lack of late-night cocktail bars downtown eventually led them to convert it into Session.
“There aren’t a lot of places that stay open late anymore post-pandemic, and especially not in the downtown corridor. We’re kind of a duck out here as far as that goes,” Tanner said. “When I get off of work at 11 p.m. or midnight, there’s nowhere to go, and that showed me that there was a need.”
Whereas Rapp Session had both a full food menu and a small market area, Tanner said Session is focused more on classic drinks with modest prices: the average cocktail on Session’s menu is $9, and glasses of beer and wine are between $4 and $6.
“We had somebody say, ‘You know, it’s so nice to see a menu with cocktails that are below $15,’” Tanner recalled. “And that’s because we want it to be approachable. We wanted to focus on the traditional (drinks) and do it really well.”
Tanner said the broader infrastructure of RRG – which includes Rappahannock next door, as well as restaurants in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Charleston, South Carolina, plus a forthcoming spot in Dulles International Airport that’s set to open next year – allows them to keep prices down.
“We’re lucky…we don’t have a lot of the expenses that a single bar does. So we’re using that to our advantage and passing that along in the prices,” Tanner said.
Session’s food menu is made up of small snacks like marinated olives and almonds ($7), blue fish dip ($8) and shrimp cocktail ($12), as well as half-dozen orders of oysters ($15).
The bar’s soft opening was in early December, and it’s now open from 5 p.m. until midnight on weeknights and 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekends.
Other cocktail-focused bars to recently arrive in the region include Fan Boy, a concept from Sabai’s owners at 2713 W. Broad St.; The Emerald Lounge, a tropical cocktail bar from the Jasper team in Union Hill; rum-focused spot Sidecar Cocktail Lounge in Midlothian; and Harry’s at Hofheimer, which replaced The HofGarden concept in Scott’s Addition. A bartender from Gwarbar also recently rolled out Aces High Bar Services, a “mobile cocktail lounge.”