A new champagne bar, market, and restaurant is finally set to serve bubbly early next month in Crystal City.
Beauty Champagne & Sugar Boutique is aiming for a Thursday, May 5 opening at the corner of 23rd Street S. and Fern Street in Crystal City, owners Zena Polin and Meshelle Armstrong announced via a press release.
The concept is an all-in-one champagne and wine bar, market, and “light bites” restaurant.
The new shop is from two well-known local restaurateurs, Zena Polin and Meshelle Armstrong. The two are also behind Hummingbird Bar & Kitchen in Old Town Alexandria as well as being associated with Eat Good Food Group. That restaurant group owns a number of local restaurants including Pentagon City’s Mattie and Eddie’s and is helmed by Meshelle’s husband, chef Cathal Armstrong.
Additionally, Beauty is somewhat of a revival of Alexandria’s Society Fair, Polin told us back in February. That’s the shop she owned that closed in 2019. A Columbia Pike offshoot shuttered in 2014.
The small-ish, 800-square foot space at 576 23rd Street S. will be divided into three rooms.
The front will be the retail shop and market, selling locally sourced cakes, cookies, treats, and other items. To the right, will be the wine room with champagne and wine being sold to drink on or off the premises. To the left, will be the 12-seat restaurant that will serve flatbreads, dips, charcuteries, sandwiches, and desserts including a “Big Ass Chocolate Cake” and the shop’s signature cookie “The Guilty Pleasure.”
The cookie is a Polin creation, according to the release, and made with “housemade marshmallow fluff, dark chocolate chunks and potato chips.”
The origin of “Beauty” goes back nearly two years, with a decision driven by a unique opportunity. In 2020, the partners happened upon the small residential-looking building in Crystal City that was once the home of consignment boutique Agents in Style.
“We jumped on it before [the concept] was quite ready, but that happens,” Polin said earlier this year. “We’ve been working on it for about a year.”
The location is a relatively short distance from Amazon’s new headquarters, as the press release points out. The partners had hoped to open the boutique in March, but permitting and licensing delays pushed the opening back by about two months.
Beauty Champagne & Sugar Boutique will be open Tuesday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.