The Capital Grille: Nine years and counting

It might as well be part of the Capitol complex, like the Russell Senate Office Building or the Rayburn House Office Building, since you’re likely to run into almost as many members of Congress and staffers at The Capital Grille as you do on Capitol Hill. You might also run into Mick Jagger, Michael Jordan and Attorney General John Ashcroft, who have eaten here recently.

This expense-account steakhouse has become one of the great success stories on the local restaurant scene since opening its doors in November 1994. It’s established itself as Washington’s premier political watering hole and, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best restaurants in town, even if you don’t like steak, or don’t eat it too often for health reasons, like me.

Part of its popularity can be explained by the old real estate saw about the importance of “location, location, location.” Situated at the foot of Capitol Hill halfway between the Capitol and downtown, near the Canadian Embassy and across from the National Gallery of Art and the Federal Trade Commission, it’s the first restaurant you pass while making your way to and from the Hill. The nighttime panoramic view of the Capitol at its front door is enough to make you want to salute, even if there wasn’t a war going on.

The other reasons are the food, service and ambiance, all of which are exceptional. The spectacular curved bar and lounge — presided over by veteran bartenders Don Barnes, Phil Jones and Tom Howard — has two TV sets and an electronic headline display, and is crowded most weeknights with well-groomed lawyers, lobbyists, staffers and assorted power-junkies.

But it’s red meat that reigns in this big, bold and beefy restaurant. The poster-sized menu is built around the haunches of prime beef hanging in a glassed-in cooler as they’re dry-aged. After 14 days in the cooler, the kitchen carves them into various cuts, like the 18-ounce Kansas City bone-in-strip that my colleague Geoff Earle ordered at lunch recently, or the 10-ounce sirloin that another colleague, Hans Nichols, tried at a separate lunch.

But the signature steak is the 26-ounce porterhouse. Nine years ago this month, I reviewed the restaurant after learning it was a favorite of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). I asked his waiter, Bill Kribben, to bring me the same thing and wrote an “Eating like Newt at The Capital Grille” review.

I invited Gingrich to join me at dinner recently, but he blew me off, so I called my friend Arthur Wu, a staff member of the House Veterans Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee, who knows his food and wine, and readily accepted.