Alcohol had nothing to do with it — that is to say, he wasn’t drunk at the time — but in 1995, Matthew Weiss made what some would consider a rash decision.

With no experience in the bar and restaurant business, Weiss decided to buy the Red River Grill, located on the Senate side of the Capitol.

Weiss was the finance manager for D.C.’s highbrow bookstore Politics and Prose when he decided to chart his new career path with nary a business plan and zero market research.

“It can be very scary,” says Weiss, who looks less bookish and more like the guy in college you went to if the keg was spitting too much foam. “You can’t be risk-averse in this business.”

Though he lacked experience, Weiss had thousands of dollars that he borrowed from family and friends, two mortgages on his home and a build-it-they-will-come faith in Capitol Hill staffers looking to knock back a round or two after work.

Maybe this wasn’t such a rash decision after all.

Weiss is now 37, married with two kids. If once a partier, he now comes across as reserved, at least around noon, when he sits down for an interview at Lounge 201, the second of his two bars, which are located on Massachusetts Avenue N.E. within a block of each other.

Red River Grill is newly remodeled and renamed Union Pub. The second, Lounge 201, is a metallic, dimly lighted place with a flat-screen television up front, pool tables in the back and 50 varieties of vodka under and around the bar used to make the house specialty: the martini.

(Weiss isn’t sure how vodka got the leg up on gin, but he thinks it has to do with marketing and the fact that it is more filtered and, according to tavern legend, results in a less severe hangover. For traditionalists, Lounge 201 has 15 varieties of gin.)

These martinis have a twist: Lounge 201 is famed for its rainbow of flavors beyond green olive. Not only can you get an apple martini here, you can get a red-caramel-apple, Key-lime-pie or birthday-cake (“It tastes just like a yellow cake,” Weiss says,) martini here. In all, he estimates, Lounge 201 offers around 50 varieties.

An endless supply of twenty-somethings and drinks as sweet as any Halloween candy is a potential recipe for mischief for sure. (He goes through 50 cases of vodka a week. That’s 600 bottles.)

But Weiss insists most of his customers are well-behaved, although “we certainly go into the bathroom on occasion and find a person we have to help get out,” he acknowledges.

More typical is celebrity and minor-celebrity sighting. George Clooney was there for the premiere of “K Street” on HBO, and former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) and his office have partied there.

“They are great customers. They have a lot of fun, but they are always respectful,” Weiss says.

Though a native Washingtonian, Weiss eschews politics in his joint, at least in the d�cor. There are no convention posters or glad-handing pictures with the powerful at Lounge 201.

“There is no Jefferson martini,” he says.

With two bars up and running, Weiss, who used to own a share of Politiki, now the Pour House, isn’t slowing down. Lounge 201, now three years old, which in bar years is, like, 85, is getting a face lift. Its back, private-party section — the bar handles as many as five private parties a week — is being remodeled.

What’s more, Weiss says, he’s on the lookout to open another bar in D.C., but off the Hill.

“I probably should be more careful, since I am playing with a fair amount of money,” Weiss says. “But if you do something and you believe in it and love it, that really shows through.”