Dacha Beer Garden
1600 7th Street NWI grew up near Chicago so I learned early on how to drive in a busy city. I’ve always laughed at people who complain about “Detroit traffic.”
I always thought the only place worse than Chicago for traffic would be New York City. I think I may have been wrong. Washington, D.C. is a nightmare.
A lot of big city traffic headaches come on the freeways but Washington, D.C.’s surface streets are amazingly awful. We stayed pretty close to downtown but tried to venture out in to the neighborhoods for meals.
We had a fairly early end to our day on Saturday so my colleague started asking around for restaurant suggestions. The one he kept getting was for the Federalist Pig. Unfortunately, they were closed by the time we made it out that way so we started looking for back ups. We tried another brewery closer to our hotel before getting frustrated with trying to drive around town and just started heading back. He was going to go out with some friends and I figured I’d just find a place I could walk to from the hotel.
We passed Dacha Beer Garden on our way back to the hotel. That’s a place that had been on my list of places to try while in town since it was close to us and, as luck would have it, there was an open parking spot right in front of the building. I whipped into the spot before asking my colleague if this was ok. It had beer and food so he was on board.
Dacha Beer Garden is an open air beer garden on the corner of 7th and Q Streets in the Shaw Neighborhood near downtown Washington, D.C.
SUNdeVICH (9th Street)
1314 9th StreetSaturday brought some of the same challenges as Friday. We didn’t have to get up really early for work. In fact, we didn’t have to start until late afternoon. That meant I had to find something for lunch before going to work.
Just like the night before, I wanted something quick and cheap. I decided to walk in the Shaw Neighborhood near our hotel to see what I could find.
Pretty much all I could find was hip sit down restaurants. Not really what I was looking for. I put “sandwich” in to Google to see what would come up. I got about ten different Subway’s and a place called SUNdeVICH.
SUNdeVICH is a counter service sandwich shop in an alley off 9th Street between N and O. The alleyway entrance is right across the street from the BP gas station on 9th. The restaurant itself is about halfway down the block in an old garage that has been converted into the restaurant.
Pizza D’Oro (T Street)
717 T Street NWFinding cheap places to eat in Washington D.C. was not easy. There were a lot of fantastic choices for meals around where we were staying by the Convention Center but I wasn’t always in the mood for a sit-down, cloth napkin kind of meal.
Our third day of this trip to DC started really early in the morning and ended really late at night. We finished our day a little before midnight. As we were walking back to the car to head back to the hotel, I asked my colleague if he wanted a pizza. I had spent about half my shift looking for a carry-out pizza place near our hotel and finally found one.
Pizza D’Oro has two D.C. locations but the one at T Street and 7th Street near Howard University was the one closest to us. Like most of D.C., parking was insane. This area has a lot of bars and nightclubs as well. It was a Friday night and parking was at a premium. Somehow, I got lucky and found a spot just across 7th Street on T. We parked and walked the half block back to the building.
Lincoln’s Waffle Shop
504 10th Street NWI don’t like getting up early when I travel. I love sleeping in hotels with the air cranked to 64 degrees and the black out shades pulled so I could sleep until after noon and still think it’s the middle of the night.
My boss had other plans last Friday. We had to get up well before dawn for our first task of the day. We’d then be able to go back to the hotel and back to bed for several hours before our evening task.
We were up at breakfast time though and when I’m up at breakfast time, I want breakfast.
We were in downtown Washington, D.C. so I started looking for someplace nearby that didn’t serve “brunch.” I wanted breakfast. Cheap diner food. And what do you know….I found one.
Lincoln’s Waffle Shop is on 10th Street right across the street from Ford’s Theater. This area of downtown D.C. is kind of touristy because of the theater. There isn’t much parking along this stretch of 10th and what little there is was taken up by street vendors getting set up for the tourists that would eventually make their way down to see where Abraham Lincoln was shot. The brightly painted restaurant that has been in this location for over twenty years doesn’t really look like it fits in with the rest of downtown. which is much more polished. Read more…
Carving Room Kitchen & Bar
300 Massachusetts Avenue NWOur first full day in Washington, D.C. was a pretty long work day. We got done with our tasks a little after 6:30.
We talked about heading back to the hotel and finding some place to walk to for dinner again but I had been searching Google for a place to eat.
I was really craving a pastrami sandwich after eating at Primanti Bros. the day before. I figured DC had to have some good deli’s or something.
I found a couple of options but the one that looked really good was Carving Room Kitchen & Bar on Massachusetts Avenue NW.
Carving Room is part of a large mixed used development across from the US Government Accountability Office. The entrance is actually on 4th Street east of H Avenue. We were lucky enough to find street parking just down the block from where we were going.
Baby Wale
1124 9th StreetThe trip to Washington DC from West Michigan is a long one. With a few stops, it took us a little over 11 hours.
We got to our hotel in Downtown Washington DC right around 8:00. We got settled in to our rooms and decided to go find dinner. The clerk at the hotel gave us a list of nearby places. I found one that looked pretty good and was only a couple of blocks away so we headed there.
Baby Wale is on 9th Street near M Street across the street from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The restaurant is described as “an industrial style pub.” It’s along a very busy street in what looks like old row row style mixed use units.
Primanti Brothers (Strip District)
46 18th StreetI told you it was going to be a couple weeks of travel blog posts. I essentially went from Des Moines, IA to Washington D.C. with just two days off at home in Kalamazoo.
My colleague and I had to drive to D.C. It’s about a 10 1/2 drive from Grand Rapids. It’s not a cake walk but it’s not a bad drive either.
The best thing about driving that route was that we were going to be going around Pittsburgh. Sure…we could have skirted around it on the highways that bypass the city, but I had a better idea. Lunch at one of Pittsburgh’s most famous restaurants.
If you’ve watched any travel show about Pittsburgh or any show about great sandwiches in the country, you’ve heard of Primanti Bros. I have never had a reason to go to Pittsburgh before but now that I had one, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.
The original Primanti Bros. location is in The Strip District on 18th Street. The Strip District runs along the Allegheny River. It’s populated by converted warehouses and has become kind of a hip area. Primanti Bros., however, has been there long before that happened. The shop was set up in the early 1930’s when the surrounding buildings were still actually used as warehouses.
Iowa 80 Kitchen
755 W. Iowa 80 RoadSometimes on road trips, you just do the kitschy things. Sometimes, you just go to the tourist traps along the highway just to say you did.
Two co-workers and I spent five days in Des Moines, IA. Our travel day home was Sunday. I really wanted to get back to Kalamazoo by 4 PM so I could go to ice skating with my daughter. I made the other two guys get up at 5:03 AM so we could get on the road. I had to take them back to Grand Rapids which extended my trip….and I wanted to stop for breakfast.
There are probably several great breakfast places in Des Moines and there are several truck stop options along I-80 heading back towards The Quad Cities, but that’s not what you do in Iowa. Nope. You wait and go to the “World’s Largest Truck Stop.”
Iowa 80 Kitchen is part of the Iowa 80 Truck Stop on Iowa 80 Road right off Interstate 80 in Walcott, IA at the Plainview Road exit just west of Davenport. You can’t miss the place. It’s huge. They claim to be the World’s Largest Truck Stop. Not sure if they have themselves that title or it’s something official, but it definitely is a rather large truck stop.
Maid-Rite (Ankeny)
802 SE Oralabor RoadThe best thing about traveling is hitting up the local legendary places. I worked in Central Illinois for about five years and made many trips to Iowa City and Cedar Rapids so I was fairly familiar with what a Maid-Rite is….but the two guys I was traveling with this week had no clue.
We needed a pretty quick lunch before starting our day on Saturday. I had noticed one of those blue signs on the highway for a Maid-Rite at the exit before ours. The guys I was with had no idea where we were going but they didn’t care as long as we were getting food.
Maid-Rite in Ankeny is Oralabor Road just west of the interchange with I-35. The restaurant is a fairly new one in a strip mall near the Walmart.
Zombie Burger + Drink Bar (Des Moines)
300 E. Grand AvenueOverwhelmingly, there was one place that was recommended to us over and over again as we went through our weekend in Des Moines. Finding time to get to that place was another issue.
Our fourth night in Des Moines was Friday night. We got down with our work downtown mid-evening then heading back out to our rental in Ankeny. A couple more hours of work sitting at the kitchen table led to discussions about food.
It was about nine o’clock when one of my colleagues and I decided to head back downtown. The other guy had picked up Wendy’s on the way back to the rental and was fine with it. He still had some work that he wanted to get done before going to bed so he stayed behind.
We headed back towards downtown Des Moines to find Zombie Burger + Drink Bar. We had heard so much about this place that we had to make the trip back in to the city.
The restaurant is on the corner of Grand and 4th on the east side of the Des Moines river in the East Village area of the city. The restaurant looks to be part of a mixed used building in an area of Des Moines where we noticed a lot of bars and a lot of foot traffic on a Friday night. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 