Restaurants
With the experience gained from working for his father's restaurant, Shallal co-founded the Mediterranean-themed Skewers with older brother Tony, in 1987. He opened a spinoff, Cafe Luna at the same corner at 17th and P, and later Luna Grille on Connecticut Avenue south of Dupont Circle. In 2000 he opened Mimi's American Bistro, featuring servers who sing, dance and play the piano between serving diners. Shallal has since sold his interests in these restaurants.
In September 2005, he opened Busboys and Poets at 14th and V, in the historic U Street neighborhood. The restaurant features a bookstore, performance space and a mural painted by Shallal. The restaurant was an instant success, embraced by the neighborhood and the progressive community, especially among activists opposed to the Iraq War. Busboys' clientele has included Howard Zinn, Alice Walker, Cornel West and Howard Dean.
Shallal opened a second Busboys location in Arlington in July 2007, and he opened a third location in the D.C. at 5th & K NW in 2008. A fourth location opened in Hyattsville, Maryland, in summer 2011.
Read more about this topic: Andy Shallal
Famous quotes containing the word restaurants:
“In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)
“restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)