DCity Smokehouse, a perfect fit for revitalized Anacostia
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Miss Ann’s is no more. It died years ago and has since been replaced by Club 3710, an upscale jazz lounge that sits on Emancipation Avenue, which is the name conferred upon the former Dowling Street once civic leaders could no longer stomach the idea of a Confederate officer with his own thoroughfare in the heart of the Third Ward. My friend Roger Wood, author of the great “Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues,” tells me the neighborhood has been smartly balancing urban development with cultural preservation in the historic Black ward, with the help of groups such as Project Row Houses.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Miss Ann’s while visiting the new DCity Smokehouse in Anacostia. The smokehouse is a handsome space, built of wood and brick and metal, materials that never go out of fashion, much like barbecue itself. DCity made a name for itself in Northwest Washington nearly a decade ago, and with the help from a D.C. government grant, the smokehouse has opened a second location on Good Hope Road SE, where a Sunny’s Carry-Out used to be a source of stir-fried sustenance.
The Southeast location of DCity is part of a larger revitalization of historic Anacostia, and as with most projects like this, you can expect loss and displacement. Perhaps some of those losses would have been inevitable, even without the influx of developers, as was the case with Miss Ann’s Playpen. Some things are not casualties of gentrification, but casualties of generational tastes, as younger people yearn for something different than what their elders desired. They’re into Kendrick Lamar, not Lightnin’ Hopkins. It’s not cultural displacement as much as cultural progression.
As Roger told me about the loss of blues clubs in Houston’s Third Ward: “This next generation isn’t really interested in hearing someone play 12-bar blues. They’re into a different scene.”
For years, Anacostia struggled to attract the kind of high-quality, sit-down restaurants that residents on the other side of the river just took for granted. But these days, the same old Sysco-grade carryouts don’t cut it in Anacostia, and we’ve already been witness to the progress with the addition of Open Crumb, Busboys and Poets, and Kitchen Savages. Like these other newcomers, DCity Smokehouse represents a different class of restaurant for Anacostia, yet the barbecue joint isn’t separate from its environment. DCity is not an interloper, naive to neighborhood’s history or exploitative of its needs. It already feels part of the community.
The smokehouse’s seamless integration into Anacostia is due in large part, I suspect, to Melvin Hines, the founder of SouthEast Restaurant Group, the company that owns DCity. Hines is also a resident of Anacostia. He lives just down the road. He knows Anacostia and its culture.
If you need evidence, just stroll over to the cubbyhole next to the pit room at DCity. In this cramped space, you’ll find framed photos, press clippings, and CDs and records connected to Rare Essence, the go-go pioneers who got their start a few miles away in a different Southeast neighborhood. The memorabilia is on loan from Charles “Shorty Corleone” Garris, the onetime Rare Essence frontman who is also working up a concept with SouthEast Restaurant Group. It will be dubbed DCity Wings and Shorty’s.
“The early days of Rare Essence, the experience of it all, came from Southeast,” Hines tells me. “We paid some respect to where it came from.”
Hines and his business partner, Charese John, are also paying respect to the craft barbecue movement they helped launch in Washington back when they hired Rob Sonderman, now at Federalist Pig, to open the original DCity in a sliver of a storefront on Florida Avenue NW. Hines and John have since ditched the head-pitmaster approach in favor of a collective model, in which a number of folks now have a hand in the barbecue. It’s probably a wise move for a company that doesn’t want to reset its recipes every time a pitmaster gets a notion to start his or her own thing.
The menu is the same as at the Florida Avenue location, and the pit crew in Anacostia relies on the same J&R stick burners to cook their meats, though in the case of the beef rib, the bone goes from the smoker to the pot for a final braise to break down that sizable muscle. The beef rib can be found on the “secret” mini-chalkboard menu, which sits on the counter for all to see. The rib may be sold under the banner of barbecue, but it eats more like a long-simmered stew, its collected juices adding spice and sweetness to the fork-tender beef. Order it without hesitation, even if traditionalists may not recognize it as barbecue.
Ordering meats by the pound can be more of a gamble here. I’ve had slices of brisket that almost melted in my mouth, followed by that familiar rush of salt, pepper and smoke. But I’ve also had slices that crumbled in my hands, their moisture surrendered to the gods well before they reached my plate. Two other meats I sampled had a certain tightness to them: almost leathery slices of pork belly, and a half slab of spare ribs whose meat — sprinkled with DCity’s irresistible rub, which starts sweet and resolves to a serious tickle of spice — was still clinging hard to the bone.
Hines tells me that DCity has developed its own proprietary techniques, which combine new technology with traditional smoking methods. He prefers to keep it all a secret, other than to say he and his team are working to create a signature “D.C. style” of barbecue. I don’t have enough insights on the process to know why some meats don’t (yet) hit the mark for me, except for one thing I spotted when Hines gave me a tour of DCity recently: The smokehouse’s holding cabinet was set to 200 degrees, well above industry average for such units. I suspect that cabinet was doing as much cooking as holding.
But when DCity is operating on all cylinders, there are few joints that can match it. The pit crew’s turkey, injected with a custom marinade, is smoky and deeply satisfying in a way that breast meat rarely is. The rib tips, sliced thin like dry-cured saucisson sec, may be the best thing on the menu — tantalizing nibbles of pork, cartilage, smoke and spice. I’m also fond of the sides in which the kitchen conceals thick dices of jalapeño, which all but ignite standard bearers such as potato salad and mac and cheese.
Sandwiches remain DCity’s strong suit, particularly the Smokehouse Melt, in which chopped brisket luxuriates under blankets of cheddar and Jack cheeses. But the restaurant’s real showstopper is the DCity Half Smoke, a deep-fried Manger link smothered in a brisket chili that literally perfumes the sausage with wood smoke. Let’s go ahead and call it a Full Smoke.
There’s yet more to come from this location of DCity. John, a professionally trained cook herself, tells me the Anacostia location will host a regular chef’s table dinner in its sizable kitchen. She sent me a sample menu, which featured a smoky corn soup with butter-poached shrimp and a smokehouse twist on surf and turf: a Maryland jumbo-lump crab cake paired with low-and-slow barbecue brisket. When it debuts later this month, the multicourse menu will immediately set DCity apart, not to mention the community east of the river which this smokehouse now calls home.
1301 Good Hope Rd. SE, 202-222-0201. dcitysmokehouse.com.
Hours: Noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Nearest Metro: Anacostia, with less than a mile trip to the restaurant.
Prices: $7 to $36 for all items on the menu, not including family platters.
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