Road Trip: Power Playing in D.C.

Once stodgy, Washington, D.C., now hops with stylish restaurants and see-and-be-seen bars.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 10/1/2006

Pinstripe suits and stiff collars? Continental menus and vodka martinis? That’s the old Washington.

The new Washington wears Prada, drinks cosmopolitans and prefers stylish to staid. It’s a young person’s town (the median age is 34.6, according to the 2000 U.S. Census), with vibrant retail and restaurant districts and a hopping bar scene to match. One key area: The Golden Triangle, an area that extends from the White House to DuPont Circle and from 16th Street to 21st Street NW.

While the designer suits and expensive restaurants tell one story, the statistics tell another. Washington, population 553,000, has a median income of $40,000. The stately million-dollar townhouses in Georgetown and on Capitol Hill belie an economic reality: The median home price is $147,000.

Hence a diversity of restaurants in the capitol’s lively business district—quick-casual lunch places for the rank and file mixed with power spots where the elite meet to break bread and broker deals.

We asked Fred Thimm, then president and CEO of The Palm Restaurants, to show us Washington’s restaurant scene. (In July, he left the company for the same position at New York-based lounge concept Martini Park.) As he presided over Washington-based Palm for 16 years, Thimm also watched downtown Washington morph from crack-den hell to yuppie heaven.

“The 14th Street corridor…10 years ago it was a chain-link fence, and you’d pay a guy $20 to watch your car,” he says. Today, it’s gentrified with modern office buildings behind well-restored vintage facades.

We’re at The Palm headquarters on Rhode Island Avenue, where Thimm is giving a preamble to our tour, which will cover 11 restaurants, ranging from casual Daily Grill to upscale Charlie Palmer Steak.

We then hop into a black Lincoln Town Car (what else?) idling at the curb. Driver Tony Pinto pulls into tangled midday traffic.

A Livable City

We duck in the Daily Grill at 18th Street and M Street. Daily Grill, an extension of Grill Concepts’ Grill On the Alley, is like a steakhouse “but more affordable,” Thimm says; perhaps that explains why the 200-seat restaurant has a 15-minute wait for lunch.

On our walk to The Palm, Thimm points out Chipotle, where the lunch line twists around the block. Another quick-casual favorite is Potbelly. “My staff walks 10 blocks to have lunch there,” Thimm says.

At The Palm we order lunch: clam chowder, blackened steak salad, crab cakes and shrimp salad. General Manager Tommy Jacamo stops by to say hello. Regular guests, he says, include strategists James Carville and Mary Matalin, Washington Post writer Tony Kornheiser and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. “I’m such a name-dropper,” Jacamo says with a laugh.

At lunch, Thimm talks D.C. demographics: “The No. 1 industry is government. When you take out government, it’s actually a small Southern city.” Being in the government business protects the town’s economy: “It’s safe from cyclability,” Thimm says.

It’s also become a more livable city, with gentrification centered in areas such as Capitol Hill and Cleveland Park. The restaurant scene has evolved along with the neighborhoods to include more upscale ethnic choices and more offerings by multi-concept operators. D.C. dining “has come into its own,” Thimm says.

Our next stop is DC Coast, a 200-seat Asian-seafood restaurant that illustrates how D.C. dining has evolved. Located in an old bank building, the restaurant, which opened in 1998, was “a breath of fresh air,” Thimm says. “It was the first world-class restaurant that wasn’t steak or French, with a menu that excited people.”

The $20 Million Burger Joint

Thimm promises that the next restaurant we visit—Clyde’s at Gallery Place—will astonish us, and he’s right. “Let’s do an over-under on how much this thing costs,” he says of the sprawling two-story restaurant, pointing out original artwork and carvings, Tiffany-style chandeliers, stained glass, leather wing chairs and a barrel-vaulted ceiling. His best bet: $20 million, for a restaurant that specializes in burgers and boasts a $25 check average.

Thimm calls it “aspiration dining, where you hang out in a place like you’ve arrived, and your rented Lexus is out front.”

This Clyde’s is the showpiece of Washington-based Clyde’s Restaurant Group, and its location, adjacent to Verizon Center, is ideal. The center is home to the city’s NFL and MLB teams and hosts musical events. “It’s been a success for the city” in revitalizing the downtown, Thimm says.

Steak with Style

On to Charlie Palmer Steak, “the only other steakhouse that I want to talk about,” says Thimm, ushering us inside the cool, modern room, complete with a wine room suspended over a shimmering pond. The sleek design, in cool whites and blues with lots of glass and stone, “is a style we don’t have in this city,” he says.

On our way to our next stop, we hit a traffic snarl that Washingtonians are used to. The street in front of the St. Regis Hotel is blocked off by Secret Service, and black limos line the blocks surrounding the hotel. Our driver guesses that either the president or vice president is at the hotel, so we go around the block and park in front of Olives, the Washington location of chef Todd English’s 17-unit chain.

Doing business in D.C. is a balancing act, offers Robert Hall, Olives’ director of sales and special events. “It’s a curious thing,” says Hall, who’s worked in Washington for 15 years. “The key to success is to focus on the power brokers.

“But if you focus on them too much, you cut off other potential clients,” he adds. Olives, with a business-oriented lunch crowd and leisure-minded dinner clientele, tries to do both.

The New Hollywood

No Washington tour is complete without a visit to storied Georgetown, where we visit Paolo’s, owned by local concept creator Capital Restaurant Concepts. “This place rocks,” Thimm says, noting the singles happily sipping cocktails at the dark bar. “This is a big drinking town,” he says.

Our last stop is a Washington classic: Cafe Milano, which remains white-hot even after 15 years in business. “You can’t get a reservation,” Thimm says. Its art-filled, cozy interior boasts a ceiling covered with a map of Milan’s subway system.

We sit at the bar and order nibbles and drinks: rosemary focaccia, calamari with tomato sauce, Tuscan tomato salad, prosecco, Italian beer, a mojito, a cosmopolitan. “This is not a chef-driven concept,” Thimm says of the simple food and electric atmosphere. “This is an experience.”

As we drink and watch the bar fill up with more singles, Thimm reflects on how far Washington’s dining scene has come. “We have the sexiest restaurants, where people want to be seen,” he says. “It’s the new Hollywood.