An Afternoon in MidCity

This is a self-portrait taken late last week at the Café Saint-Ex, a small Art Deco brasserie named after Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the famous French aviator and author of The Little Prince, and situated in the MidCity neighborhood at the corner of 14th Street and T Street NW (just a couple blocks from the U Street Metro station). This artistic moment came on the heels of a long-anticipated lunch with a friend at the Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant at the corner of U Street and 12th Street, NW.  This has been our favorite Ethiopian joint ever since the Red Sea, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, closed down several years ago.  That was really too bad since the good folks there would always prepare for us a serving of "zigene" (also known as "kay wat"), a traditional Eritrean dish consisting of spicy minced beef stewed in a red "bebere" pepper sauce.  You have to remember that this was at a time when Ethiopia was locked in a bitter civil war with its breakaway province which became an independent nation twenty years ago.  So Eritrean dishes rarely appear on Ethiopian menus.

There are several Ethiopian restaurants to choose from in Washington, DC, but we latched onto Dukem very early on and we have never been disappointed with our favorites dishes.  We always share a platter consisting of basic "tibs," small cubes of beef mixed with carmelized onions, jalapeños peppers, rosemary and a spicey "awazie" (red chili) sauce; lamb "wot," small cubes of lamb in a thick "bebere" sauce; and Dukem's own version of "kitfo" which is very well-ground lean, raw beef mixed with clarified herbal butter, cardamon, and "mitmita," another red chili sauce matched with cumin for a particular kick.  Add chopped tomatoes and powdered dried red chili as side condiments, and a generous stack of "injera," a spongy, yeast-risen flatbread used to grasp the offerings for eating, and you are ready for a unique culinary experience.  And who can forget cold bottles of Ethiopian beer to wash it all down?

 After lunch I walked a block to the Industrial Bank of Washington which for a century has been an institution of Washington’s African American community.  Situated at the corner of 11th Street and U Street, NW, it was founded in 1913 by John Whitelaw Lewis as the Industrial Savings Bank, but closed 19 years later during the bank crisis that led to the Great Depression.  It reopened under its current name in 1934 when it was purchased by Jesse Mitchell, an African American businessman from Texas with the law degree from nearby Howard University.  Operated exclusively by African American employees, it was the only bank in the city that allowed African American patrons to borrow money.

Next I wandered a couple of blocks down to the intersection of 13th Street and T Street, NW and the site of the former Whitelaw Hotel, an Italian Renaissance Revival structure open in 1919 in the heart of this neighborhood long associated with the city’s African-American community.  Early in the 20th century during Jim Crow segregation, John Whitelaw Lewis conceived this hotel as a luxury accommodation for African American visitors.  Cab Calloway stayed here when he was appearing at clubs situated just up the street along the U Street corridor, what Pearl Bailey once called the "Black Broadway."  Duke Ellington (1899-1974), who grew up in this neighborhood, was also a fixture at the hotel as was Joe Louis, when he was in town.  Known as “The Embassy” by the African American elite of the time, it eventually closed in the late 1970s when this entire neighborhood fell on hard time after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 and the subsequent riots and the influx of drugs and street violence.  It was reopened in 1992 after renovation into low and medium income rental housing, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1993.

Back in the mid 1990s my family and I came to this very intersection  where we helped serve Thanksgiving dinners to the homeless and indigent at the Llewellyn Scott Catholic Worker House of Hospitality, at 1305 T Street, NW, just kitty-corner from the Whitelaw.  One year my young son and I took a break and walked through this ramshackle area of vacant and boarded up row houses and peopled by the lost and lonely.  It truly was a forgotten corner of our nation’s capital.  Over the past two decades, however, this entire neighborhood has slowly gentrified.  The late Michael Kirwan, who founded the shelter held his ground for many years, but after his untimely death in 1999, the shelter began to lose ground and now the house is one of the many upscale rowhouses in the neighborhood.  It was just a short walk to the Café Saint-Ex where I sat at the dark wood bar for a couple of beers to cool off on a hot and sticky day and where I pondered my reflection in the mirror behind the bar.  What a difference a couple of decades will make!

My next stop was back on U Street at Ben's Chili Bowl, a notable culinary landmark adjacent to the Lincoln Theater since it first opened in 1958 by Ben and Virginia Ali.  The sign says it all – “the Finest Hot Dogs and Chili Served with a Touch of Class."   Built on the site of the Minnehaha, Washington’s first silent movie theater, Ben’s, just like the Whitelaw Hotel a half a century earlier, has been a meeting place for the cultural and political elite of Washington - black and white.  Bill Cosby and his wife Camille met at Ben's for dates and still eat here for free when they are in town.  President Obama and Vice President Biden met here for lunch early in their first term.  I had already had a filling lunch, but it is always fun to walk in and get a feel for the place.  I plan to do a future posting from a counter stool at this fine establishment.

Next door is the Lincoln Theater, opened in 1922 and a mainstay along this corridor until it, too, closed in the wake of the 1968 riots following the murder of Reverend King.  It reopened in 1994 at the height of  the renovation and gentrification of the neighborhood.  Most of the leading African American entertainers from the early decades of the 20th century -- Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Holliday, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald -- held court here. Later it served as a popular neighborhood cinema.  It joined the Whitelaw Hotel on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 following a full-scale renovation.

A nice, hot and sticky late spring (read early Washington summer) afternoon in the U Street neighborhood.  I always enjoy myself when I come here.  I should do it more often.