Walgreens To Invade Yenching Palace?

The old restaurants are dropping like flies. At the end of 2005, Truman-era steakhouse Blackie’s House of Beef served up its last porterhouse. In August, embattled real estate developer Douglas Jemal purchased the land occupied by A.V. Ristorante — a move that will force the 57-year-old Italian restaurant to close by October 2007. And yesterday, an enterprising tipster told us that the rumor on the street (well, on Connecticut Avenue) is that Yenching Palace, the 51-year-old Chinese restaurant in Cleveland Park, could become a Walgreens drug store.

Although present-day locals know Yenching Palace more for the restaurant’s fantastic neon sign and facade and its old-school charm than for the quality of its moo shu, there is no debating that it has a serious history in this town. Back in 1962, U.S. and Soviet officials hammered out the terms that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis at Yenching Palace. That’s right, a nice pu pu platter and some stiff Zombies helped avert a nuclear disaster.

But Yenching Palace might not go gently into that good night. According to the information that our tipster has cobbled together, the Chinese restaurant falls within the Cleveland Park Historic District, so any proposals to alter Yenching Palace will have to go through the Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3C. If the rumors prove true and a sale successfully runs the preservation gauntlet, the Walgreens location would be the best-of-breed drug store chain’s first outpost in the District.