Butterworth’s Is for Bosses. MAGA’s Next Generation Is Hanging Out at Scarlet Oak.

It’s a Wednesday night — a crucial detail — and it’s loud at the bar. Introductions are flying over the clinking of wine glasses, and there’s plenty of shout-talking about very important jobs.

Most people are still wearing suits and dresses because they rushed here straight from the office. None wear their lanyards or badges, but some have the tell-tale two phones sitting in front of them on the table or bar.

The bartenders are gladly pouring more and more of the — half off! — wine, and the demand will only increase as more people pile inside. It doesn’t matter that the patrons have to work tomorrow. Work is part of why they’re all there in the first place.

“The secretary had a hearing day, so now we’re drinking,” a woman announced as she entered.

This is Scarlet Oak, a Navy Yard bar and restaurant that’s barely a 10-minute walk from the Capitol campus. For those in the know, it’s affectionately referred to as “Scoak.” And like clockwork on Wine Wednesdays, young political staffers, especially Republicans, arrive in droves to get in on the discounted wine. Their youthful, gregarious presence transforms an otherwise sterile establishment, the Chainsmokers of restaurants, into something resembling a weekend college party.

Get there early enough, and there is usually plenty of seating. But in just a few hours, it is standing-room only. On any given week, the patrons could include lawmakers, MAGA influencers and lobbyists.

“The D.C. Republican circle, it’s not small, but … everybody kind of knows each other,” an aide for a Senate Republican who frequents the bar told NOTUS. “If you want to feel like you’re seen, and you’re pushing the needle and you’re ‘somebody,’ people go there to feel like that.”

Eavesdropping and people-watching at Scarlet Oak offer a candid view of the people who actually run America day to day. Alcohol helps turn guarded politicos into chatty storytellers and networkers. If you make one outgoing friend here, you will inevitably be introduced to several of their work acquaintances — people they used to work with at so-and-so’s office, or attended college with. At times, this sets the stage for light drama — romantic interests, current and former, might spot each other from across the bar.

Some of Scarlet Oak’s regular patrons mock the rituals familiar to D.C.’s political scene: Two 20-something staffers dressed in business casual jokingly ask each other, “What office do you work for?”

Gen-Z MAGA influencer CJ Pearson said going has become “a young Republican rite of passage.”

“You really do run into a wide array of people. It’s not just Hill staffers, White House staffers, but also members of Congress who will roll through,” Pearson said. “It’s definitely a great sense of community in a city that is largely blue. … When I’m ready to turn it up a little bit, I’m going to Scoak.”

“It’s just one of D.C.'s best-kept secrets,” he continued.

Compared to the newer, Trumpier cocktail bar Butterworth’s, Scarlet Oak has flown under the radar despite its years of building its reputation in Navy Yard and on Capitol Hill. It didn’t even make it as a brief mention in Axios’ “These could be the new Trump hangouts in D.C.” article a few months before Trump’s 2024 election.

Perhaps because it’s not so obvious that those staffers would flock here. The restaurant’s millennial-gray walls are decorated with abstract art that one could find in a mid-priced hotel room. Aesthetically, the place is swanky enough to pass as an upscale lounge for private working dinners, yet casual enough to suit staffers’ decompression sessions.

Scarlet Oak has leaned into its reputation for its Wednesday discounts. Its bartenders wear matching shirts that ask, “Is it even Wednesday without wine?” and the restaurant’s social media pages often post videos of wine-pouring to promote it.

Scarlet Oak’s management did not comment on its place on the political scene.

Multiple regulars said it’s never nearly as busy as it is on Wednesday nights — and also that it never gets as crazy as it does past 10 p.m.

Given its location in a neighborhood many Republicans call home, Scarlet Oak is predisposed to be a Republican hangout. But some Democrats also find reason to go.

Yemisi Egbewole, who was the White House press office chief of staff during the Biden administration, said she has occasionally tagged along for drinks with Republican friends like Pearson. She explained that while Republican bigwigs seem to prefer “stuffy” watering holes like Butterworth’s, “Scarlet Oak is where the people who do the actual grinding and turning hang out.”

“It’s interesting where I thought, ‘Oh, the people just go for drinks, and then they go home.’ But it’s really like a community. It’s almost like a clubhouse,” Egbewole said. “If I had a business or something, or I was a lobbyist, and I was trying to figure out, ‘What are Republicans thinking?’ I’d probably go to Scarlet Oak.”

Brooklyn Tucker, a former Republican House aide who now works at the Department of Transportation, described Scarlet Oak as a second home. She celebrated her 28th birthday there, where she said staff brought out Champagne bottle sparklers and laid out framed photos of her.

“Scarlet Oak was just very apolitical, and it just naturally progressed into a hangout spot for people in the admin and on the Hill,” said Tucker, who estimates she’s invited anywhere from 30 to 50 people there over the years. “I’ve made so many connections there that have helped me throughout my career.”

Another thing regulars like Tucker enjoy? “It’s not like an intern bar,” she said. “I feel like we’re gatekeeping a little bit, but I’d say the age range is from 24 to like, 34, so it’s not just like early-20s people that are going there.”

The restaurant’s Wednesday-night environment can leave patrons who are out of the loop shellshocked.

“It is incredibly loud,” one Google reviewer, who rated the place four stars, wrote. “It sounds like everyone is yelling… it is difficult to have a conversation at a table. Apparently it’s a Wednesday thing because it’s half off bottles of wine.”

“We do apologize for the excess noise. Wednesday is our busiest night of the week,” the restaurant responded. “The neighborhood really looks forward to it for many years now.”