The pandemic is forcing restaurateurs to completely rethink their businesses in myriad ways. Case in point is Glover Park Grill in the Glover Park Hotel in — you guessed it — Glover Park. It’s the latest D.C.-area effort from Michael Schlow, the James Beard Award-winning chef who also owns Mexican-minded Tico on the 14th Street corridor, pasta joint Alta Strada, and Nama sushi bar in Mount Vernon Triangle, among others.
Glover Park Grill replaces Schlow’s Italian trattoria Casolare, which shuttered this spring when the hotel closed down due to the pandemic and underwent a change of ownership. The new owners asked for a fresh concept; Schlow felt a casual American grill was just what the neighborhood needed.
Though there wasn’t a major renovation to the restaurant’s interior, the Grill did get new artwork on its freshly painted walls for its late November opening. The biggest change was expanding its outdoor terrace in the hotel’s driveway. Dotted with heat lamps and distanced tables, it’s a two-for-one concept: a coffee bar-café during the day and the main dining area when dinner service begins at 5 p.m. (Guests can still request to sit inside.)
To develop the menu, Schlow worked with chef Hamilton Johnson, who now heads up the kitchen. Johnson made a name for himself at Vidalia, earned accolades for his Southern-meets-Nordic inspired cuisine at Honeysuckle, and most recently had short stints at American Son in the Eaton Hotel and Emilie’s.
The food hews American, classic, and comforting. “We’re doing familiar dishes well and putting our stamp on them,” Johnson says.
Take the appetizers ($9-$17 each). Steak tartare is elevated with caramelized onion puree, roasted garlic Parmesan aioli, and steak sauce. Deviled eggs are a longtime staple in Hamilton’s repertoire. Here he garnishes them with chow chow (pickled vegetables), crispy sopressata for a hit of crunchy-salty-fattiness, and a dusting of chili powder. Elsewhere, the traditional crab cake gets a brightening lift from lemon yuzu aioli.
For main courses (starting at $13 for a salad and going up to $46 for steak frites), there are several standout sandwiches. Panko-crusted deep fried chicken thigh finished with spicy dry rub and jalapeno honey is slathered with chipotle aioli, topped with lettuce and pickles, and slipped into a potato roll. Their take on the now-omnipresent cheesesteak is a hoagie packed with crispy ribbons of shaved short rib with mushrooms and onions, poblano cheese sauce, and rosemary aioli.
Other entrees include crab cavatelli peppered with chili flakes and plenty of garlic, and roast chicken accompanied by faro and roasted kale. There are two holdovers from the Casolare menu: the self-explanatory “giant chicken parm” (which more than lives up to its name and can easily feed two) and pizza. “Everybody loves a huge chicken parm,” says Johnson, “especially during a pandemic.”
Executive pastry chef Alex Levin had free rein to create the dessert menu and the pastry offerings in the café. Like the savory items, the sweets lean into traditional American favorites.
For dessert, there’s a customizable sundae with the diner’s choice of house-made ice creams: vanilla, chocolate, salted caramel, or coffee; tiramisu; and caramelized apple crisp with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream (prices range from $10-$13).
One of Schlow’s favorite flavor combinations is caramelized bananas and chocolate, and it appears twice: in bread pudding lavished with salted caramel and vanilla ice cream on the dessert menu and in muffin form at the café.
Other notables at the café include a pair of cookies: peanut butter sparkling with sea salt and chocolate chip that start out crispy at the edges but get chewier in their centers. “It’s the best chocolate chip cookie you’ll ever eat,” claims Levin, who lists it on the menu as the “World’s Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie (It’s true).”
Bagels were a staple on the weekends for Casolare’s brunch; now they’re available every day, “because I want to make them all the time,” Levin says. Currently, only plain and everything are offered, but he is listening to guest feedback and may add another flavor into the rotation.
For diners not comfortable eating out, everything at Glover Park Grill is available for pickup or delivery — with the exception of the ice creams. “These days you have to takeout in mind when you create a dish,” Johnson says. “You have to think about how it’s going to hold up in a box.”
It turns out that thinking outside the box to adapt to the pandemic means thinking about what goes on inside a box.
Glover Park Grill is located at 2505 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Hours are Monday – Sunday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. for the café and 5-9 p.m. for dinner service.
