Sample the offerings of a quarter reborn
WASHINGTON -- Being a visitor here can be frustrating. The avenues are wide and beautiful, the museums magnificent and generally free, and the monuments impressive. But when 5 p.m. rolls around, and you and your family have been walking for hours through the Smithsonian and around the Lincoln and Washington memorials, the city can seem suddenly deserted.
|
ADVERTISEMENT
|  |
We remember a long and tear-filled walk in the early 1990s when the children were young as we tried to find something to eat, or a place to get a drink, or maybe a little nightlife that didn't involve the expense of the Kennedy Center or a trip to Georgetown. We were faced with canyons of empty stone and a city that seemed to close up tight as soon as business hours were over.
Luckily, cities evolve, and the area just blocks north of the National Mall, once Washington's commercial and retail downtown, is rapidly going from deserted and slightly scary to vibrant. The area now called Penn Quarter boasts dozens of restaurants, theaters, a major shopping center, museums, the MCI sports center, bookstores, art galleries, and even a megaplex movie house.
On a cool afternoon recently, we walked three blocks from an office on F Street to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the Mall to see an exhibit, and then headed back toward Penn Quarter. The Hotel Monaco, designed in the 1840s to resemble the Temple of Jupiter in Rome and once used as the General Post Office and later as the Tariff Building, looked intriguing, with its marble walls and massive columns. Inside we found Poste, the boutique hotel's restaurant, where chefs were giving the kitchen staff instructions for the evening. A plate of olives at the bar, and another of bruschetta topped with grilled peppers and grilled shrimp, took the edge off our hunger, and the early evening bustle of an affluent-looking after-work crowd made for good people-watching.
Later, we walked another block to IndeBleu, a new French-Indian fusion restaurant on G Street. Chef Vikram Garg spins fantasy into such fusion-tinged dishes as a tower of lobster and lump crabmeat with marinated mango, or seared foie gras sandwich with rose petal marmalade and garam masala brioche. After we sampled several small plates, we finished with the pastry chef's interpretation of spaghetti and meatballs: saffron ice cream extruded into pasta shapes and balls of the Indian favorite, rosewater-flavored gulab jamon, tasty, though a little more frill than substance.
Though the cost of these little plates added up quickly, the range of dining in Penn Quarter is wide. Jaleo, a Spanish tapas restaurant that was a pioneer in the area, offers a range of tapas at quite reasonable prices; and Zaytinya, under the same ownership, does the same in a vaguely Middle Eastern-style. Down the street on Seventh there's a Legal Sea Foods, District Chop House and Brewery, and Rosa Mexicana as well as other chain and independent eateries and lounges. Chinatown, adjacent to Penn Quarter, has many affordable restaurants. Five Guys Chinatown on Eighth, a popular hamburger joint with mega-size burgers, can satisfy red meat cravings for as little as $2.69 a burger. A new branch of the tea emporium, Teaism, opened recently on Eighth Street, and there are plenty of
