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Washington DC’s Allegory was named the winner of the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award at North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023. Emma Janzen meets the bar’s cerebral creative director, Deke Dunne, to discover how Allegory blends metaphor with intense and provocative iconography to create one of the most joined-up concepts in the drinks world
Activism, art, culture and cocktails collide on the menu at Allegory, the high-end cocktail bar located inside the Progress Library at the Eaton Hotel in the US capital. Ignoring the old maxim that politics and religion have no place at the bar, the radical speakeasy infuses every aspect of its programme with hidden meanings that ultimately ask the guest to question the roots of systemic racism and its impact on society.
The allegory – a literary device where a story, poem or image represents deeper political or moral meanings – employed to achieve this goal is a reimagined telling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which reveals the story of Ruby Bridges, an American civil rights activist who was the first black child to attend an all-white school in New Orleans in 1960. Her story is first told through the sprawling mural that covers the walls of the bar, illustrated by Erik Thor Sandberg – a DC-based artist known for his surreal, at times unsettling, style – and continues on the menu, which has been named the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu for North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023. 
The Down the Rabbit Hole menu is inspired by Ruby Bridges, an Afro-American civil rights activist
“Ruby is our guiding light, our moral foundation,” begins Allegory creative director Deke Dunne. “So most decisions we make – whether it’s sustainability choices or the products that we use or the people that we hire – all of it is done through the lens of Ruby and everything that she went through.”
Titled Down the Rabbit Hole, the winning menu launched in mid-2022, but its creation began a year prior when the team realised the need to reacquaint guests with the mission and purpose of the bar after pandemic closures. The design process began with a new set of Sandberg’s compelling illustrations. “We thought, what better way to do that than partner with the original mural artist to reimagine his own work and visualise the allegory in our menu, in the form of a children’s book,” Dunne explains.
Once the artwork was in place, Dunne asked the bar team to devise cocktails that would fit the narrative. “Normally, we’d make the cocktails first and then shoehorn them into a menu, but for this one I asked my team to be directly inspired by the art,” he says. Each cocktail is deliberately designed to fit the story of the page that it’s on, and every page progresses the story forward, like a literary device in its own right. “In chapter one, for example, I put together a highball that represents the looking glass, the metaphorical mirror that Alice goes through to get into Wonderland. I wanted to create a drink that would transport the guests into the menu, so it’s a hyper-clarified, carbonated highball that looks transparent, like a looking glass.”.jpg)
Allegory's cocktail menu is also reflected in the bar's décor, with a mural depicting characters from the story
As the images unfold, the story shows Bridges entering a fantastical world, discovering danger and ultimately emerging on the other side triumphant. The drink styles and flavours shift to match the mood. “We go from light, bright, refreshing and bubbly to deeper, darker drinks in Act Two when things are turning for the worse, and then in the end when the hero slays the Jabberwocky we have tropical, citrusy drinks, with a fruity margarita at the end,” says Dunne.
Art imitates bar life
The combination of artwork and cocktails was originally going to be the extent of the menu, to allow the guests to imagine the mood of each moment themselves, but this changed as the production process evolved. Eventually, Dunne decided to add direct quotes from Bridges to bring her story to life more explicitly. “Every word in the menu comes from a Ruby Bridges interview. We didn’t take any liberties at all,” he says, adding how every inclusion was approved by the Ruby Bridges Foundation to ensure her legacy would be represented in a way that is meaningful and respectful.
Designed by Keiry Benitez (formerly the hotel’s in-house designer), the menu also includes key information about each cocktail, like price, ABV, and bartender names, to give credit where it's due. Each menu item also features a layman terms description to explain the drink’s personality in a way that’s easy to understand. Dunne’s Eyes of the Flame, for example, is a drink made with Siete Misterios mezcal, Equiano Afro Caribbean original rum, Nixta elote, reclaimed mandarin, passion fruit and palo cortado; it’s described as “a spirit-forward mezcal and rum cocktail that is deliciously unexpected. Smoky, strong, bold and bright.” Or take the Garden of Live Flowers by Kapri Robinson, with R&R Assembly gin, rhum agricole, bitter bianco, snap peas, cardamom, aloe, black pepper coconut and lemon: “If a Mai Tai was grown in a garden, then this would be it. Green, earthy and fresh,” the text reads.
Garden of Live Flowers: “green, earthy and fresh”
To balance the heaviness of the storytelling with more approachability, subtle hints to the behind-the-scenes techniques and sustainability initiatives are also present in the ingredients lists, such as ‘reclaimed mandarin’ and ‘lacto-carrots’, alongside more commonly known things like clarification and carbonation, which serve as additional rabbit holes for cocktail enthusiasts and bartenders to tumble down, if they so choose. “I love getting heady with the cocktails and using super advanced techniques, but at the end of the day, we don’t want the cocktails to overshadow the story – they should work in concert together,” Dunne says. “If somebody wants to geek out, there is enough information there to do that, but we don’t want people to drown in our science.”
At the end of the menu, several additional sections similarly help keep things light. “We have a section for low-abv and high-abv beer-and-a-shot combos as an ode to the portmanteau,” he says. “We also have a classics section called ‘Back to Reality,’ so if people get overwhelmed with our esoteric ingredients and heavy storytelling, they can go to this section and find low-key classic cocktails that are a bit more approachable.”
In some cases, the story continues off the page, when the guest receives the cocktail. “With the Eden cocktail, for example, the art from Eric references part of the looking glass story where Alice finds a place similar to Eden, and so it’s a bright happy place where you can be a kid and have fun, but that’s the last moment of childlike naivete the heroes can have, because you can see the Jabberwocky lurking in the background, so we know something is about to go wrong.
“I wanted to make a cocktail that was really nostalgic, very reminiscent of those great moments when you’re a kid. Maybe that’s freshly cut grass in the summertime and you’re swimming in the pool, riding your bikes around, eating an orange creamsicle – I clarified and carbonated a Ramos Gin Fizz, which we bottle, and then we spray the guest with bubbles when they receive it. It creates this whimsical childlike moment.”
Deke Dunne (left) receiving the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award as part of North America's 50 Best Bars 2023
When this menu’s life cycle reaches an end later this year, the team will launch a new iteration that explores other angles of the Ruby Bridges story – and a percentage of proceeds from the current one will be donated to the non-profit anti-racism foundation founded by Bridges herself. For Dunne, the recognition that comes with the Siete Misterios Best Cocktail Menu Award will hopefully help spread the bar’s message and ethos beyond Washington DC. “One of our long-term purposes is to inspire other bars to develop concepts that are inherently political and advocacy-driven,” he says. “This award is validating, of course, but more importantly I hope it helps push our genre forward in a positive way.”
Now go inside Allegory and meet Deke Dunne in the video:
North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023, sponsored by Perrier, was announced at a live awards ceremony in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, on Thursday 4th May 2023. Browse the website to browse the full ranking and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to stay up to date with all the news and announcements.
