Photo by absentmindedprof
Residents of a Chinatown apartment building are a bit miffed with the restaurant Graffiato and its chef and owner, Mike Isabella over what sounds like a rather fun party there earlier this month.
A resident who lives in the nearby Avalon building at 770 Fifth Street NW, which shares a back alley with Graffiato (707 Sixth Street NW), says that as the party continued into the early hours of March 5, the shenanigans got louder and more disruptive to the neighbors. Shortly after midnight, he tells DCist, some of the partiers started setting off fireworks in the alley.
“Not like a firecracker here or there, but a string of them that lasted for some minutes, followed by multiple large fireworks exploding and repeatedly showering the alleyway in light and sparks,” he writes.
After a noise complaint call to the Metropolitan Police Department, the revelers went back inside the restaurant, but a few hours later, the resident says, they were back at it. “Once the police left the scene they re-emerged screaming, pounding dumpsters and acting like a bunch of assholes until 3:30 in the morning,” he added.
According to a letter circulated to Avalon residents, Graffiato had been playing host to a monthly “industry night” dinner attended by Isabella’s fellow toques and restaurateurs. The letter states that a restaurant manager said the events happen on the first Monday of every month.
He adds that Graffiato staff also told Avalon residents that each of these dinners will likely run late into the night and that because they are the owners’ events, there is not much the restaurant’s employees can do. The resident calls the response “outrageous.”
“That Mike Isabella is a total asshole is no secret, he made that clear on national television, but to be forced to deal with it at 3 a.m. on a Monday night is totally unacceptable, much less be told basically we just have to accept it’s going to keep happening,” he writes.
But a spokeswoman for Graffiato says that Avalon residents have it wrong, and that the March 4 dinner party was a one-time thing. “This was an isolated event, not a weekly occurrence,” Jen Resick Williams writes in an email. “Graffiato received noise complaints on Tuesday, March 5. They formally addressed the concerns from their neighbors, issuing a formal apology and assuring neighbors that the event was a one-time occurrence.”
Williams says the apology was delivered as a written statement to its neighbors, but would not elaborate on the message’s content. Meanwhile, Bill Hager, the spokesman for the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration confirms that the agency did receive a noise complaint against Graffiato and is investigating.
As for residents of the Avalon, while they might not like Isabella’s partying ways, they are fond of what he cooks up at his pizza and small plates restaurant across the alley.
“Graffiato is known for great food and drinks and a fun atmosphere, and has played an important role in the ongoing revitalization of the Penn Quarter area,” the apartment building’s letter reads. “But that doesn’t give them permission to be disrespectful of their neighbors.”
