It’s been 20 years since smoking was banned in DC’s restaurant dining rooms. But lately, cigarettes have made a small but notable return. At La Merna, the buzzy new Dupont Circle restaurant specializing in Chicago-style tavern pizza, you can get an amaro-infused espresso martini with a cigarette for an extra $3—or a pack for $30. You just have to smoke it outside.
“The Midwest is kind of a big smoking culture. And I guess, you know, smoking is quote-unquote trending again. So it seemed fitting just to lean into it,” says co-owner Meg Schmitt.
Schmitt and her partner Bradley Shorten, who also operate food businesses in Chicago, sourced lot of vintage decor for the nostalgic-feeling restaurant. Schmitt says she initially wanted to bring in an old cigarette machine she’d found, but had nowhere to put it. Then she came across a vintage dispenser for individual cigarettes. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, we should do it with a cocktail. We should do a coffee and cigarette cocktail…’ It just kind of avalanched down to that.”
The restaurant had to get a special license from DC to sell the cigarettes. Schmitt says they had to find a shorter style of cigarette to fit in the dispenser and settled on a Canadian brand called Export A— a “nicer cigarette, not just one that you can get at the corner store.” It’s paired with an espresso martini riff that’s meant to evoke the flavors of coffee and cigarettes with a bitter smokiness from amaro. (You can also order the cocktail without the cigarette for $14.)
For the record: cigarettes are still bad for you. You’ve heard the stats since grade school. Smoking and second-hand smoke leads to over 480,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC. More than 16 million Americans suffer from smoking-related diseases, like cancer, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes.
That hasn’t stopped cigarettes from coming back into vogue lately, fueled by some combination of nostalgia and fatalism. Between war, climate crises, and a potential AI apocalypse, a growing cultural attitude seems to be: what’s one more cigarette? Pair that with the glamorization of all things vintage and a new generation of celebs abandoning the taboo of smoking on camera. (Kylie Jenner was photographed lighting up on a cover of Vanity Fair earlier this year, while Hailey Bieber recently posed with a cigarette for an Interview magazine photo shoot.)
Locally, it’s still very rare to find a restaurant or bar selling cigarettes. But Franks Wild Years, a dive-esque bar on 14th Street, opened this summer selling packs from a vintage machine in the back. (Sandwich shop Compliments Only also has a cigarette machine—but only for candy cigarettes.) Franks Wild Years is named after a Tom Waits song and album, so the owners say the machine just made sense with the vibe: “Tom Waits is kind of synonymous with cigarettes and kind of the lifestyle of Wild Years,” co-owner Kate Talbert told Washingtonian when the bar opened.
“I just feel like growing up in bars, everyone had a cigarette machine,” added co-owner Sean Ryan. “That and a jukebox.” (The bar does not have a jukebox.)
Meanwhile, at La Merna, the new “Coffee & Cigarettes” offering is already proving popular.
“We sell them every night, like every single night, multiple tables get them. So people are loving it,” Schmitt says. Still, she pushes back on the idea that restaurant is glamorizing cigarettes: “I would just say we’re realistically putting something out there. We’re not trying to push smoking, but we’re just saying if you want a cigarette, we have an availability for you to buy one.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind DC’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
