Photo by Rukasu1.

The beloved Tune Inn, one of the oldest bars in the District, will have to replace its kitchen due to a fire that broke out yesterday morning. The good news: the owners of the bar have insurance which will cover both the rebuild of the kitchen and the salaries of some staff — and it appears as if bartenders and wait staff will benefit from an outpouring of support from members of the community.

Yesterday’s fire started thanks to some grease in the kitchen. But despite a lot of smoke, the broken front windows and the completely destroyed kitchen, the place was actually doing surprisingly well, as Tim Carman reports:

“Initially when I walked in, it looked like the whole place was flooded,” [owner Lisa Nardelli] told All We Can Eat. But after clean-up crews were done following Wednesday morning’s kitchen fire, she realized that she and her family had actually escaped disaster.

Her grandfather’s hunting trophies, her father’s fishing trophies and even Nardelli’s own deer trophy were still intact and undamaged. So was the rest of the memorabilia in the historic bar, which holds one of the first 500 liquor licenses issued by the District of Columbia following Prohibition. Nardelli breathed a sigh of relief, since the stuff was irreplaceable.

Nardelli also told Carman that ownership will strive to “do our best to get it up and running as soon as possible.”

In the meantime, the Tune Inn’s incredibly devoted patrons are already hard at work to ensure that their favorite watering hole gets back on its feet. DCist commenters quickly got to work on planning an event to help defray employee’s loss of income (we’re told a Facebook invitation is coming soon, and will update this post with that link when it’s ready). Given the national media attention the bar got yesterday, we have to imagine we’ll be enjoying a patty melt again sooner, rather than later.