This just in, an announcement on Twitter says kitchen construction starts next month at Red Palace. The new kitchen will occupy the space formerly devoted to changing rooms and the downstairs stage at the pre-merger Palace of Wonders. Expect burgers and more to eventually satiate your hunger.
HstreetDC Margaret Holwill
Finally! Burgers coming to #HSt. With salads, great sides, and more! @redpalacedc preparing to install new kitchen. Work starts next month.
8 comments:
Swoon. Big fan of the new Red Palace. They haven't lost any of the charm of the old.
They can change their food all they want. Nobody will go to this place until they change their staff and management. I am all for a moody staff, but these guys/girls are all terrible. There is a reason this place is usually empty on nights when the rest of H is hopping, and it aint the food.
gotta say, i was there on a dead night and the bartender still wasn't on point. when a customer's drink is empty, that's the cue to ask if they want another one. i imagine the managers/owners would expect more. the place has potential but i the bartender i met seemed hungover and unconcerned about his one customer. hopefully the new version is better...
I completely disagree with the two comments above. The bartenders at the Red and Black have always been great to me. They know every beer on the list up and down. And I've never had a problem getting a refill on the palace side even during a show when they're packed to the gills.
Speaking of service, we went to Smith Commons for the first time this Friday. There were 6 of us. The hostess at the front told us that there will be a 2 hour wait however, we were welcome to order food on the 2nd level where there is an open table policy (meaning no reservations). So we had a few drinks at the bar meanwhile asking a group of people who were seated in the center if anyone else was waiting for their seats once they had finished. The people said no so we continued waiting until they were done and went and claimed those seats. A few minutes later the cocktail waitress comes over and tells us that those seats were "kind of" reserved and that we should leave. We insisted that the hostess clearly told us that there are no reservations on the 2nd level. Upon hesitating for a little she let us sit there. Basically she was testing the waters to see if we could be gotten rid of easily. The last I heard reservation is either a 1 or 0 there is on "kind of" or fuzzy logic there. As soon as the waitstaff starts to apply their own criteria as to who and who should be priveleged to be seated on an open table policy floor based on perhaps size of your moustache, whiteness of your teeth, the number of your facebook friends or any other thing they may deem appropriate it becomes questionable. Anyway, the food was decent, the wine and beer we ordered was pretty good.
I don't know if I've ever had bad service at The Red & The Black, nor have I seen it empty during the last year. I didn't regularly frequent Palace of Wonders, and I don't go over to that side much now, but The Red & The Black side has always had good service. It's definitely not a specialty cocktail place or a wine bar, and I don't think its aim is to compete with say HSCC or the Biergarten. It's a place for sitting back with friends, drinking beer, and listening to a sometimes fairly hardcore jukebox. Even though we probably only go there once a month, the bartenders and manager still know us. I have, however, seen the bartenders aggressively cut drunks off (by just flatly refusing service) and they will skip over your attempts to play crap music. If you want a server to come to your table and place a perfectly crafted drink in front of you on a coaster places like Church & State, Fruit Bat, Smith Commons...are probably more your speed. If you want to relive your 20s in DC and get your drink on like it's 2002, then head to the Biergarten or HSCC. Just know what you want and don't bag on the places that aren't your speed.
I am the first anonymous. I am a guy in my early 30's. My ideal bar is a chilled out dive bar. Red and Black would be my ideal bar. In fact, for the first year it was my favorite bar on H street. I am not bagging on it, becasue it is not my scene, I am bagging on it, because it seriously sucks. It is truly the worst staff on H Street. I understand some might disagree, but look on yelp at how many people say the service is the worst. Like I said in my first post, I don't mind a moody, gruff bartender, in fact, I think it adds to the charm of some dive bars, but the staff at R&B go way beyond that. Too many choices all over DC for low key dive bars, to deal with these a-holes.
Just one man's opinion of a guy who has lived on H Street for 8 years.
Where are the bars where no one goes? I'm tired of waiting in a line of 20 douchebags to take a pee.
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