Photo by IntangibleArts
Last year, the Florida Avenue Grill celebrated 70 years of serving Miss Bertha’s Breakfast Special. For those unfamiliar with the historic diner in Shaw, Miss Bertha’s special gets you two hotcakes or french toast topped with cinnamon and sugar, two eggs any style, bacon, sausage, or scrapple, and apples, home fries, or grits. In other words, enough food to put you in a soul food-induced coma.
And while a number of customers have patronized the establishment for decades, The Grill’s owner, Imar Hutchins, used the anniversary as a time to assess.
“I said if I’m really going to invest myself in it, what should it be,” he says, choosing not to rely solely on the history of the restaurant, which has withstood everything from natural disasters and recessions to D.C.’s crack epidemic and crime waves.
When surveying diners, Hutchins found the restaurant’s lack of alcohol service to be the top complaint. “We’re probably one of—if not the only—full service restaurants [in the neighborhood] where you can’t have a drink,” he says, adding that the absence of alcohol especially harms the restaurant’s dinner service. “If there’s a party of five and one person wants to have a beer, then the whole party won’t come.”
That may soon change, though. Hutchins has applied for a liquor license, with a hearing date set for January 26, 2016.
While he wants food to remain the diner’s focal point, the addition of alcoholic beverages during brunch and dinner are a necessary accompaniment, he says. “If we want to survive, we have to stay relevant.”
Since purchasing The Grill in 2005, Hutchins has some made other changes that have seemingly gone unnoticed.
“All of the sides are vegetarian at this point, whereas they used to have all kinds of meat in them,” he says. But that’s not something that’s advertised “because it tastes good, and people like it.”
In a past life, Hutchins, who has been a vegetarian since the age of five, co-owned a chain of vegetarian restaurants called Delight of the Garden. There were two in D.C.—one in Georgetown and one near Howard University—two in Atlanta, and one in Ohio.
He’s also written three vegetarian cookbooks. “A lot of people know me more from that life than from The Grill,” he says.
Imar Hutchins, owner of the Florida Avenue Grill. Photo by Christina Sturdivant
While his intent isn’t to become the next best vegan or vegetarian restaurant in the city, Hutchins has also added vegan options to The Grill’s catering menu and launched a vegan brunch called F&11.
“I came up with the name,” says one of The Grill’s employees Yasmin Radbod who also founded the Baltimore Vegfest.
While the inaugural vegan brunch on November 1 sold out with about 35 guests, it was a bit formal, says Radbod, who foresees that the future F&11 will be more relaxed. “I want to get more of a younger crowd, change the music—I want to have a funk band—and make it more lively,” she says.
The next one is scheduled for New Year’s Day.
Imar Hutchins and Yasmin Radbod. Photo by Christina Sturdivant
Like its neighborhood, The Grill is in a state of transition.
“What Imar and we’re all about, which is really cool, is making it modern,” Radbod says. “We’re keeping all of our fundamentals but we’re pushing forward all the time. We’re updating who we are, but not losing sight of who we are.”
