The owners of Fran O’Brien’s Stadium Steakhouse in the downtown Capital Hilton recently learned what Lorelai and Rory Gilmore have known all along: regularly scheduled Friday night dinners are contentious affairs.

As of May 1, Fran O’Brien’s weekly Friday night steak dinners for injured war veterans will be no more, as the steakhouse loses its basement lease in the hotel. And Fran O’Brien’s owners and the vets themselves are contending that business realities have far less to do with the steakhouse’s eviction than the hotel’s unwillingness to spend the money to make the restaurant more accessible to those with disabilities — and the hotel’s fear that the specter of hobbled veterans was warding off customers on potentially hopping Friday nights.

For the past three years, Fran O’Brien’s has quietly hosted Friday night dinners for injured war veterans, many of whom are driven into town from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Bethesda Naval Hospital specifically for the opportunity to chow down with dignity. Once at the Capital Hilton, the basement dining room at Fran O’Brien’s has never been easy to get to for anyone, much less for those vets who can no longer walk — either by virtue of age, injury, or limb amputation. Indeed, because the downstairs restaurant was not accessible by a direct elevator, some vets have reportedly had to enter the restaurant via a trip through the coat room and faraway service elevator. But the vets abided because the dark basement space provided the physically challenged vets a place to eat out away from the glaring eyes of people who have a natural tendency to stare at anything out of the ordinary.