The Room
Ben's Chili Bowl opened at 1213 U Street on 22 August 1958, when Ben Ali, a Trinidad-born Howard dropout, and Virginia Rollins took over a shuttered silent-movie house. They married seven weeks later. The room outlasted the 1968 riots that gutted U Street, the Metro Green Line construction that emptied it, and the gentrification that priced out nearly everyone around it.
It looks much as it always has: red vinyl booths, the original Formica counter, a wall of photographs running from Duke Ellington to Barack Obama, who ate here days before his first inauguration. Virginia Ali, now in her nineties, still turns up. This is the rare landmark that is still the thing it commemorates.
The Food
The order is the chili half-smoke. A coarse half-pork, half-beef sausage, grilled, split, laid on a steamed bun with mustard, onions and Ben's homemade chili. $9.79. Add fries and a drink for $5.49 and lunch lands under fifteen dollars. Ben Ali, a Muslim, never ate the pork version he built a city's appetite on.
Chili cheese fries, chili dogs and thick milkshakes fill out the rest. Service is counter-and-runner, fast and warm. The James Beard Foundation named Ben's an America's Classic in 2004, and the citation has aged well.
Best Occasion Fit
Solo Dining: The counter is one of the best solo seats in Washington. You eat fast, you watch the room, and nobody bothers you.
Team Dinner: A working lunch here costs less than the parking near most DC client dinners, and it levels the table. Order half-smokes for the group and let the room do the work.
First Date: A contrarian first date for someone who would rather talk over a half-smoke than perform over a tasting menu. Cheap, loud, unpretentious, and a story to tell.
