Вашингтонның тарихи "Ben's Chili Bowl" мейрамханасы

Restaurant in Washington, D. C.

Ben's Chili Bowl was founded on August 22, 1958 (Friday), by Ben Ali, a Trinidadian born immigrant of Indian descent who had studied dentistry at nearby Howard University, and his fiancée, Virginia born Virginia Rollins. The two were married seven weeks after opening the restaurant. The building they chose was that of Washington's first silent movie house, the Minnehaha, which was established in 1911. The building is a contributing property to the Greater U Street Historic District. Most of the furniture in the restaurant is original to the 1950s. At the time, U Street was known as "Black Broadway". Many jazz greats of the day, such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Nat King Cole, would stop by the restaurant when they performed at U Street clubs. The U Street corridor was devastated by the April 1968 riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. During the riots, black activist Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, asked Ben to keep his restaurant open, and the Alis obtained permission to stay open past curfew. The restaurant fed both the police officers and firefighters working to impose order on the neighborhood, as well as the black activists. The violence and arson reached such an extent that Ben wrote "Soul Brother" in soap on the front window in the hopes that it would stop the angry mobs. The destruction of so many businesses led to the flight of residents towards the suburbs and the economic decline of the neighborhood through the mid 1970s to mid 1980s. As the area became known for its drug addicts, Ben's Chili Bowl reduced its staff to one employee. The Metro and lower crime rates helped the gradual revitalization and gentrification of the neighborhood. From the early 1990s, business revenues grew by 10% annually, to $1.5 million in 2005, and the number of employees at the restaurant grew as well, to a staff of 20. The New York Post quoted Nizam Ali as saying, "We see this as part of being involved in what is good for the neighborhood, what's good for the city It's a good idea that helps the environment and, it turns out, makes economic sense for all of us." though it has a more limited selection than the original restaurant. On October 7, 2009, Ben died at the age of 82. He and his wife, Virginia, had retired from the restaurant business, having passed daily operations of Ben's Chili Bowl to their sons, Kamal and Nizam. In 2009, Ben's sons, Nizam and Kamal, opened an upscale restaurant and bar, Ben's Next Door, at 1211 U St, NW, adjacent to the original building. Featuring alcohol (something not available in Ben's), the restaurant's goal is to "complement" Ben's, according to Nizam, who says that the goal is to stay "true to ourselves".

The Boston Globe described Ben's diverse customers as "punk looking kids and fashionable business people and everyone in between". The most famous regular customer is comedian Bill Cosby, who took his future wife to Ben's when they were dating. Cosby recalls that during some of his visits with Camille, who was then a student at the University of Maryland, he would "eat as many as six half smokes at a time." On November 3, 2008, a new sign was posted to add "the Obama family". Starting in 2012 a large mural featuring Cosby adorned the building, but was removed in January 2017 amid sexual assault allegations against the comedian. Many other celebrities, including Chris Tucker and Bono, have visited over the years. When journalist Ted Koppel stopped hosting news program Nightline, he held his 2005 farewell party at the restaurant. The Washington Post asserts, "By the late 1990s, no D. C. politician would dream of running for office without dropping into Ben's." However, celebrities at Ben's are not limited to American citizens. In 1998, former DC mayor Marion Barry described having traveled to Ghana and meeting the Mayor of Accra, an alumnus of Howard University, whose greeting was, "Glad to have you in Accra. Is Ben's Chili Bowl still there?" And when French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni Sarkozy visited Washington, D. C., in March 2010, they reportedly each had two of Ben's half smokes during their visit to the restaurant. Scenes from films including The Pelican Brief and State of Play have been filmed in the restaurant, and it has been in "dozens of TV shows." The short film Breakfast At Ben's was filmed almost entirely in the restaurant. The documentary Traveling While Black, a virtual reality project about racism, makes use of the restaurant as the main filming location in 2019. Additionally, it has been used in novels as the setting for fictional meetings—especially meetings that involve individuals from "different sides of the law"—as it was in George Pelecanos's King Suckerman. Ben and Virginia Ali were inducted into the D. C. Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the alley adjacent to the restaurant was renamed "Ben Ali Way".

In 2004, the James Beard Foundation named Ben's one of the "down home eateries that have carved out a special place on the American culinary landscape". Michael Stern, a writer specializing in U. S. regional foods, penned a 2008 review raving "The half smoke is sensational!" and "Ben's serves one of the best sweet potato pies anywhere", and describing the chili as "sensational stuff: thick, peppery, full flavored and positively addictive". In January 2009, food magazine Bon Appétit named Ben's one of the country's ten "Best Chili Spots", asserting, "No reasonable discussion of great chili joints can take place without mention of this U Street institution." In a 2016 The Washington Post restaurant review, Ben's received one star and the food was described as "awful."