ShopHouse Opens, Pharmacy Bar Under New Ownership

ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen opened its seventh restaurant yesterday. This fast-casual, Asian themed, Chipotle spin-off is located at  710 7th Street NW near Chinatown. There are now three ShopHouse stores in DC, including the original in Dupont, and another on M Street NW in Georgetown. There is one store in Bethesda and three more in southern California. ShopHouse is very vegan friendly, just check the clearly marked menu for the veggie nuance (like, green papaya salad is not vegetarian) in sauces and toppings. The staff is great as well. Goodbye lunch money!

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Adams Morgan's Pharmacy Bar has been a bit of an oasis in the desert of sometimes undesirable imbibing locations present on 18th Street NW. After Asylum did a 180/transformation into Smoke & Barrel, Pharmacy was left as one of my personal go-to bars for friends' birthdays, know-everyone-there impromptu hang outs, and any basic no-hangups chill hangout with good people you know and love. Well, the bar isn't going away anytime soon, but it is about to be sold to new owners who will likely make changes that promise to transform it significantly. The Washington Post has a good write up here. Looking forward to seeing the changes. So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Pharmacy Bar's new owners planning a name change, coffee service, a patio and new soundtrack. http://t.co/PHcOrX6spg pic.twitter.com/KZTeYA3KR4
— Fritz Hahn (@fritzhahn) May 6, 2014

ShopHouse Kitchen, Cava Grill Opening in Penn Quarter

Future Cava Grill location at 707 H St NW.

Future ShopHouse location at 710 7th St NW.

Great, great news for food options in Penn Quarter. ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen and Cava Mezze Grill are slated to open in Chinatown. 

Each restaurant is in the fast-casual, quick-serve style. They each allow customers to order "up the line" choosing a combination of ingredients to create highly customizable dishes. There is no table service. 

ShopHouse --a division of Chipotle-- is one of my favorite DC lunch spots, with two current stores near 28th and M NW, and Connecticut Ave and Q NW. They have clearly marked vegan items and top notch customer service. The food is pan-Asian, taking cues form Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and Malaysian cuisines. Check out the menu here. To find out what dishes are vegan, check the actual menu boards inside the stores.

Cava Grill is the fast-casual spin off of the similarly named small plates restaurant, Cava Mezze. Cava is local. The company was started right here in the DC area, mid 2000s. The Grill is awesome. Like ShopHouse, they offer vegan-friendly, affordable options for a quick meal. The food here is Greek & Mediterranean. Yes, that means they serve high quality falafel. Check out what's vegan here.

The new ShopHouse restaurant is located at 710 7th Street NW (formerly a Ruby Tuesday). No exact opening date is known to me, but they are hiring for this location, which is a good sign.

The new Cava Grill restaurant is located at 707 H St NW. That storefront was most recently Capital Q BBQ, which closed in 2012. Again, no exact opening date is known to me, but I will keep you updated.

Chipotle's ShopHouse Hiring, Soon to Open in Dupont?

Still under wraps, but now hiring.

The Chipotle owned, Asian themed restaurant ShopHouse is now hiring for its first-in-the-nation DC location. To me, that says the opening date can't be too, too far off in the future. Chipotle already operates over 1,000 fast casual Mexican food restaurants, including locations all over the DC area. Their ShopHouse brand will be inspired by the cuisine of Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. I'm intrigued.

The Dupont location is the first floor of what used to be the Riggs Bank building, adjacent to the Dupont Metro station. PNC Bank inhabited the building after buying Riggs and went about re-leasing the Connecticut Avenue storefronts to other retail businesses. ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen will be located at 1516 Connecticut Ave NW, joining AT&T, Sweetgreen, and BGR. By the way, ShopHouse is hiring for line cooks, prep cooks, and of course, servers. 

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