(Pat Padua)

“If 233 Pennsylvania Avenue SE were a woman, she’d be in her sixties and wearing a pair of black-cat eyeglasses and a beehive.”

Washington Post writer Victoria Dawson wrote that in 1987 about Sherrill’s Restaurant and Bakery. The D.C. institution was so beloved that in December 2001, then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich took a moment on the house floor to remember the passing of owner Lola Revis, stating: “I still miss my daily breakfast of two slices of plain wheat toast, a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon on the side, which cost less than three dollars.”

Props from the former Ohio Representative aside, Sherrill’s was known for its surly waitresses more than it was for good food. Still, the Capitol Hill haunt made front-page news when it closed in July 2000, replaced soon after by a business that didn’t last nearly so long: Ritz Camera.

Revis and her husband bought the diner in 1941 from William Sherrill, and kept the original owner’s name. For nearly sixty years, the old-school neon lasted on a stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue that, aside from the old school liquor store Gandel’s, no longer looks like old Washington.

Not that Sherrill’s was all that, uh, great. It was still in place when I started working on the Hill, but I only went a few times. And one of those times a lunch companion found a roach in their drinking water.

Writing about Sherrill’s in a 1988 piece called “Local Landmarks” A Diner’s Guide”, a Post writer admitted that “not all home cooks are good cooks” and declared that the joint’s main problem was sludge: “The gravy is sludgy, the biscuits are pasty, the soup is gluey.”

The Post was clear about what made this purveyor of home-cooked sludge a local institution: “Sherill’s has enough atmosphere to compensate for the food in its fans eyes … It is a place that invites you to hang around and soak in old Washington. ’ You can still soak in a bit of old Washington these days at the Tune Inn in the next block, but all you can soak in at 233 Pennsylvania Avenue SE is corrected vision: it’s now home to a My Eye Dr.

Watch the Oscar-nominated documentary short, “Fine Food, Fine Pastries, Open 6 to 9,” directed by one-time Sherill’s water and busboy David Petersen.

FINE FOOD, FINE PASTRIES, OPEN 6 TO 9 from David Petersen on Vimeo.