Way back in 1944 Lacey Wilson, a Capitol Hill shoeshine man saved up all his tips and with his wife Bertha they were able to open a small humble restaurant right on the corner of Florida Avenue at 11th Street in Northwest Washington DC.
Lacey had a vision that he was determined to see brought to life and he was willing to work as hard as he could to make it happen.
He wanted a restaurant that felt like home, where the customers were friends, where you could get a soulfully home-cooked meal for an affordable price.
Lacey envisioned a place where blacks could come and enjoy a meal comfortably without being harassed during a time when the nation was filled with racial tension.
The story goes that the Florida Avenue Grill was built with just two chickens at a time. Lacey started each day with 2 poultry, once they were cooked and sold as meals he gave the earnings to his wife Bertha to buy two more chickens.
The cycle continued during the early days of the restaurant and by the 1950s they expanded beyond it’s two stools.
The Grill physically looks the same way then as it does today with its long formica counter with worn stools on the left side facing the open kitchen and the right side are tables with chairs, while the walls are covered with autographed pictures of various musicians, movie stars, politicians, athletes and other notable people who’ve dined there over the decades.
You can sit at Martin Luther King’s booth where he sat planning the March on Washington.
This down home Southern style diner serves recipes that have been perfected over 80 years like cornbeef and hash, fried ham and eggs with home fries, fluffy hotcakes served with butter cinnamon and powdered sugar, salmon cakes, collard greens, crispy fried catfish with cheese grits, chitterlings (pig intestines), pigs feet, their famous pork belly meatloaf, fresh biscuits and cornbread and of course peach cobbler.
Today it’s the oldest continuously operating Soul Food restaurant in the world, but it’s more like a living museum, preserving decades of history and its legacy for you to experience first-hand.
So just drop by the next time you’re in DC, you never know who you might be sitting next to like Denzel Washington or Clint Eastwood, who are regulars.
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