Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Car Pushed Into Anacostia River By Train
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Devendra Banhart @ 9:30 Club
Hole 7: Meter Reader - You may escape a ticket, but you're unlikely to avoid tripping on the warped sidewalk, being distracted by his butt, getting the ball through his cankles, or generally finding the hole. (Josh Novikoff)
Opening tonight is H Street Country Club, the much anticipated, long awaited indoor mini-golf course/Mexican eatery in Northeast. We’ve heard rumors about the DC-themed holes bordering on two years now. Chalk up their logo, which says "Est. 2008," to overzealousness. Even the hard hat tour in February 2009 showed a place still in development; there wasn’t a blade of fake grass in sight. Last night we had the chance to be among the first to test out the course, margarita in hand, at a press preview.
What ended up as a 9-hole course upstairs is heavy on artistic flare and inside the beltway humor. Instead of dodging rotating windmill blades, you’ll time your swing around a K Street Lego Lawyer swinging his briefcase on Hole 3. You’ll find on Hole 6 the de rigueur loop-de-loop fashioned as the Springfield Mixing Bowl, complete with a ramp to nowhere and wrecked autos to hold up [golf ball] traffic. Tap the ball through the legs of an obese meter maid with his pants falling down, around a zombie like FDR, or between the Lincoln Theater and Ben’s Chili Bowl.
It’s an unforgiving 22 par course, with most holes set at an unrealistic par 2. Three are par 3 holes, including the most interesting and elegant of them, the Lincoln Memorial at Hole 4. You’ll need a straight, firm, lucky shot to travel the length of the glassy reflecting pool and up the impossibly steep first set of “stairs” to the hole. But you’ll probably ricochet off the second staircase and bounce back to the bottom. Over and over and over again. Same thing with our friend, the meter reader. He’s standing on a cement sidewalk, not Astroturf, so the ball’s going to keep on rolling until you put it in the hole. Mini golf costs $7 per player. There’s also shuffleboard and billiards downstairs ($15/table/hour at all times), 50 cent Skee-Ball and Big Buck Hunter while you wait to tee off.
The alcohol-infused putt-putt is what started the buzz back in 2007. But it’s the food that H Street is promoting first and foremost. Last week's press release focuses on the Atlas District’s new “300-seat dining destination.” The authentic Mexican menu was designed by Ann Cashion and Teddy Folkman that includes quality, fresh ingredients from high-quality purveyors and vendors. The beverage program focuses on Spanish and Latin producers.
Two kitchens, one upstairs and one down, boast separate menus. We sampled items from downstairs’ more casual “El Norte” bar menu. Executive Chef Pablo Cardoso’s perfectly greaseless, large, crispy, and homemade tortilla chips steal the show. Don’t miss them with a made-to-order guacamole with 1 ½ avocados and just the right amount of salt to make it the best rendition I’ve sampled in some time. The spicy tamales, stuffed with ground beef, are delicate in a white husk and enhanced by a red chili and tomato sauce. The “El Luchador, ($10)” a tequila cocktail complemented with muddled cucumber, cilantro, and jalapeños, provides a fiery way to wash down a couple of meat pies or cut through the beans of the nachos. Most El Norte items are $7.
The dining room menu served upstairs, before you get to the golf course, offers a mouthwatering array of northern and southern accented Mexican cuisine with appetizers topping out at $11 and mains in the $15-$22 range. Cardoso pointed to the sopa de pan, a vegetable soup with croutons, capers, black currants, olives, eggs, and topped with queso fresco ($7) lamb enchiladas with green rice ($19), and chilaquiles with roasted duck ($22) as his highlights. Coconut flan, buñuelos, and tres leches cake are each $6 for dessert.
The H Street Country Club concept packs a lot into a spacious two floors that we can imagine becoming a bit jammed on a Friday night. There's not much room to maneuver through the crammed course to begin with. So watch out for your neighbors' backswing off the 6th tee. Look out for a spilled glass of Country Club Amber turned instant water hazard. And see if what may be the area's most alluring Mexican menu can thrive as a dining destination just across the hallway from a boisterous, indoor miniature golf haven. We thought the sport went with burgers and milkshakes. But we're eager to trade in our malted for a Pimm's Cup and plate of shrimp in pipian sauce.
H Street Country Club
1335 H Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
Hours: Monday - Thursday: 5:00p.m. - 2:00a.m. (kitchen until 11p.m)
Friday - Saturday: 5:00p.m. - 3:00a.m. (kitchen until 12a.m.)
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the only place to play skee ball in DC, yes?
If so, I'm all over it like brown on dookie.
You can play skee ball at Rocket Bar on 7th St as well
Wish you could actually win tickets at Rocket Bar. I find skee ball strangely hypnotic.
monkey, there's always Dave & Busters. I think the closest one to DC is White Flint.
Yeah, but then I'd be in White Flint. And I'd end up deaf as well. Christ, that place is noisier than Hard Rock.
In the mid-90's, my sister was not allowed in a Dave n Buster's because there was a hole in her jeans.
They have Skee Ball at the ESPN Zone on E Street. Sure, it's not quite as hip as this joint, but can you watch 400 games simultaneously at the H Street CC?
You mean I can play skee ball and have jumpcut-and-strobe-induced siezures? Sign me up!
They should add a Marion Barry "Bitch set me up!"-themed hole.
Maybe just a hole Barry could crawl into?
Booze + Golf Balls + Golf Putters = putput course in ruins by August.
other hole ideas:
1 - you must hit the ball in one ear of Fenty's and out the other.
2 - you must hit the ball down 17th street without anyone grabbing them. i mean it. i mean the golf ball.
3 - you must hit the ball down an escalator with fat tourists standing on the left and the right.
4 - you must hit the ball across Clifton street without being hit by falling bricks.
5 - you must hit the ball down 18th street in Adams Morgan, banking it off a bachelorette party and dodging a pile of puke in front of Big Slice.
"3 - you must hit the ball down an escalator with fat tourists standing on the left and the right."
This, or a similarly Metro and tourist-themed hole, is exactly what they are missing.
Wow, there's no way anything could possibly go wrong when you combine golf putters and drunk people. Good thing this isn't in Jim Graham's part of town.
On one hand, it's a cool idea. On the other, it sounds like a bigtime douche magnet.
This.
Yeah, I'm with Alexa Lex Alex on this one.
artistic flare
I think you mean "flair" unless it's on fire. Which would be much more challenging.
Let me bring the jury's attention to Exhibit A: Performance Artist with Road Flare Up A$$. Title: "Artistic Flare."
Could be that the course widens at the end in an fancy way - hence, artistic flare.
I am not a religious person, but if there was a heaven for me it would look like that mini golf. I want to visit this place, live the rest of my days there, and when I am gone, have my ashes interred as part of the golf course.(Give my urn away as a skeeball prize.)
How does the course compare with the one that was at a bar in the Old Post Office Pavilion? Or Jungle Golf at Virginia Beach?
I'm with RJ. Between kids swinging free and the drunk adults spilling along with other inebriated behavior, this course will be trashed by July.
Love the idea though. Of all the great things on the menu why pictures of nachos? Not the most appealing thing in the world (not to hate on nachos)...
I very much wish I could have provided pictures and reported on tastes of the upstairs dining room menu, which does sound really great. But all that was on offer last night was the El Norte snacky stuff.
No worries, Josh. You got me thinking about fresh guac as I leave the office this evening.
So did you shoot par on the course?
My take on H St. Country Club:
1. The hole with the 'Mixing Bowl' is F***ed up! It is more of a spiral ramp of a parking garage and your ball often ends up trapped on a middle level, leaving the "golfer" to utilize their putter to get their ball out in more of a pool-cue manner.
2. Marion Barry-as-The Awakening. No crack, no bitch setting him up. No sitting in his car at 3am in the park with 'powdered sugar from donuts' under his nose. No ironic moral stances. Boo.
3. The food is decent but expensive. I ordered an enchilada with lamb and green rice. What is green rice? White rice with little bits of parsley or broccoli mixed in. All for $19.
4. Damn good Margarita, served in a tumbler glass--so I don't feel like I'm drinking something that my mom would order on a cruise ship.
5. I luuurv me some skee ball, but the whole point of skee ball is gaining tickets that can be exchanged for a Chuck-e-Cheeze keychain or something. I know this is not Chuck-e-Cheeze, but I would like to see some freakin' tickets dispensed for my 50 cents and 200 points earned through my considerable skee ball skills.
5. Thumbs-up on the available sangria pitchers. I saw several golfing groups walking around with their own.
6. While the individual holes are often amusing, the construction seems rather fragile. There already are places where the astroturf is torn. Give this place six months of drunks wielding golf clubs and a spilled drink here or there and it is going to the plywood or plaster-of-paris statues will look rather shabby. OTH, I am told once H St. CC is up to speed, they plan on adding another 9 holes on the roof.
My advice: change a couple of the holes every few months, to give people a reason to keep coming back to spend $7 on MINI-GOLF!! With Fenty, Pelosi, Cheney, whats-his-name-who-replaced-Barack Obama in the Senate, hipsters, tourists, commuters from VA & MD, interns and all-around obliviousness...there are all sorts of places to look in D.C. for inspiration when creating a new mini-golf hole.
I shot a shot a 26, with Par for the course being 22. That included taking a 1 stroke penalty on the National Cathedral hole when my ball got shot off course from the tunnel it went through. Also planned on taking a mulligan on the Lego Lawyer hole, but my playing partner had already written in the 5 on my scorecard. Did birdie the Mixing Bowl.
It's a fun course, but it is a course designed by an artist, not a minigolf company. So as CD alludes to, some of the construction leaves something to be desired, golf wise. It's not a "serious mini-golfers" course. The 3 pipes on the Nat Cathedral Hole will shoot your ball with excessive force so that even if it falls in the right tunnel, the pipe wont shoot it into the hole. The Beltway loop is hard to conquer, even if you hit it with the right force, gravity often drops the ball and sees it bounce back. Or leaves you pool cue poking it free. And the Meter Reader is merciless. Cracked sidewalk is cute, but there's a reason golf isn't played on concrete.
Great post, Can. Dracula. Commenter money is that the course will be in tatters by November. We'll have to go then for a second look. I wont be surprised if an angry player takes a club to the Lincoln Monument after seeing their ball fall down the stairs for the 10th time.