5 Points Tavern – the long road to victory

1120 E. Fort Avenue in Locust Point has been a bar for a very, very long time. Longer than I’ve been alive, longer than my parents have been alive, longer than ….you get the point. To the longest stretch of my memory, it went from being a bar called French Quarter – a dark, unsettling place where normal bar patrons should never go – to Aloha Tokyo, a poorly managed (both space and quality wise) attempt at a sushi/karaoke bar. Which, even in real estate-bubble era Locust Point didn’t really fit quite yet, alongside the failed Nasu Blanca and Luca’s, which has now reverted to something similar to its former Truman’s in Barracuda’s.

Real estate lessons aside, last summer Aloha Tokyo came under new ownership and the long process of completely renovating the space began in earnest, finally reopening as 5 Points Tavern in October. Whereas Aloha Tokyo was cramped as all getout due to a very large wooden bar in a 14 foot wide building with drop ceilings and dining booths, 5 Points has been stripped down to exposed brick in most parts and opened up as much as humanly possible, providing some breathing room for patrons with additional plans to install bay windows on the side of the building to generate an airflow perfect for summertime. With intramural spring and summer leagues coming up, it could be the perfect decision.

The food selection is basic pub grub with some nice highlights, including fresh cut potato chips (one of the few places in the city that does it, $4) which were thickly cut and delicious, homemade hummus and a build-your-own sandwich menu. The bar features a fully stocked selection of liquor and bottled beer, but the crucial point missing here is a lack of draft beer. Especially at this time of “DRAFT MANIA,” with many area bars expanding their selection to 20+ taps as a standard, for some folks curious about sticking around at 5 Points it could be make or break when they see a lack of taps.

And this is where the point of the post’s title comes in: in order to install draft lines and kegs, the entire basement of 5 Points needs refitting, which takes a lot of time, money, and more money and more time. Cooler Kegs could be a stopgap solution, but probably not in the long run. To be fair, there are plenty of other bars in Baltimore that do just fine with bottled beer sales and have maybe only three or four tapped selections (or none at all). And Taps, when it first opened, didn’t have taps for 3 months+ and it lasted for two years. The road to victory is paved with selection, and people seem to really love beers on tap right now. It’s a major hurdle, converting an ancient Baltimore bar to the modern era, and if 5 Points Tavern can pull it off, it’ll be a great neighborhood bar to compliment the likes of Thornton’s and J. Patrick’s.

…and getting back to that real estate lesson, development in Locust Point has resurrected itself like whoah in recent history, so the investment in that little space is destined to pay off given the influx of new upper-middle class residents and employees. Expect good things out of 5 Points in the near future.

(horrible phoneoto by me)