Chop’t Opening New Downtown Location

This is really great news! I wonder if the line at the 12th & G Chop’t will also be out the door during lunch time.

When it was Cafe 1200, it was a very popular lunch time spot both for office workers & construction crews. But 1200 had a full hot bar, as well as cold & hot sandwiches (and was open for breakfast). I’m sure this Chop’t location will do well at lunch, curious to see how it does in the evenings though.

Too bad they are overpriced and tasteless. Now if High Noon would open a location in Chinatown that was open evenings, i’d be in heaven

Wow, another chain restaurant, who cares?! I guess any hope for a Mom & Pop establishment or a bakery is out of the question. DC has zero personality when it comes to business development.

Chop’t only has 6 stores, 3 in DC & 3 in NYC and it’s already considered a chain/corporate America. Wow.

I guess that makes Busboys & Poets and Ben’s Chili Bowl chain restaurants too..

Chains are usually anything that has multiple locations especially in different cities. DC’s answer for a bagel shop is Brueggers? There is no concept of an H&H here. There are no pizza parlors (Matchbox & Ellas don’t count, they’re too yuppie oriented). If you walk up and down 7th St. you see Fado, Fuddruckers, Clydes, La Tasca, Cal Tort, Legal Seafoods, Ruby Tuesday, Jaleo, etc.and they’re all chains. When are small businesses going to get a chance downtown?

I agree with what gpliving was saying.

It’s a bit ludicrous to lump a local or small chain in with national retailers as being soul-less corporate entities. Bosox knocked Jaleo for pete’s sake… they only have 3 locations and were a downtown pioneer. Some urban revitalists have argued that Jaleo was more integral to the downtown resurgence than the Verizon Center.

Would we all like to see more small businesses downtown? Sure. But it’s very expensive real estate. There are some zoning things that can be done to ensure some smaller and older commercial spaces can remain. But the typical small business may need to prove itself elsewhere in the city before they earn the keys to the porche. That may be in H Street NE, or it could just be a few blocks off 7th.

Bosox, don’t make DC out to be nothing but chains.

There are a lot of local establishments, albeit very few in PQ, but other neighborhoods do have them.

Why are PQ residents never satisfied? At least the storefront is not going to sit empty anymore. And I think Chop’t has been a great addition to our neighborhood. It is definitely nice to have a healthy option in the area.

I cannot believe the author of this post is equating Cafe 1200 with good food. Cafe 1200 was one of the nastiest lunch joints around. The chicken salad was full of gristle, the lunch meats extra slimy, the sandwiches dripping in mayo and everything else extra oily. Most of the hot items were fried pieces of fat impersonating chicken/beef. One of my coworkers got sick from the pink (i.e., light) tuna fish they served. Of all the local lunch buffets with people coughing and sneezing into and touching the food, Cafe 1200 was the worst.

Anon #10, you & I will just have to disagree. The hot turkey sandwich? That thing was excellent. I already mentioned the tarragon chix salad that was a weekly meal for me for a number of years. I stayed away from the food bar, but I always shy away from those no matter the location.

Even in the mornings, you could get a fried egg sandwich for $2. I do miss that place.

#6: Ella’s is too yuppie oriented?! I bet I could walk into their establishment bare footed, wearing a wife beater and torn jean shorts and still get seated at one of the booths by the window. And I don’t mean any disrespect to Ella’s, they offer one of the friendliest, unpretentious restaurant environments in PQ – pizza’s great too.

I think Breadline does a great job of being a local joint that serves inexpensive and great food in a casual environment, not to mention they make the best bread in the city which gets shipped to stores all over to sell. I wish they could open more stores in locations that they might keep open for longer hours. Of course, then they would be just another evil, corporate chain, losing all of their personality instantly.

Breadline is a chain in my mind because it is owned by La Brioche Doree (the chain of pastry shops in train stations and the like) which is owned by Groupe le Duff which owns La Madeleine.

The scary thing is if you look closely at a lot of restaurants in DC, they may appear local but actually aren’t. There are very few restaurants in town truly owned by a local DC-resident (i.e. Dino in Cleveland Park comes to mind)

Chopt is a chain in my mind no question. There is no local feel serving more or less bagged, tasteless salad products for high prices.

In my opinion, better to have these “chains” (however you choose to define the term) than a desolate and deserted neighborhood.

With the exception of a few cities where the urban/downtown core never really died (NYC and Boston come to mind, but I’m sure there are others), most cities that have revitalized their downtown areas feature lots and lots of chains – shops and restaurants. I travel very frequently for work, and have seen this pattern repeat across the country. Admittedly, not a scientific study, but I see it often enough not to be surprised when I see the same restaurants (Morton’s, McCormick & Schmick, Oceannaire, etc) in every city. And it probably won’t change anytime soon.

So where are the other Breadline chain locations where I can pick up their great turkey w/mustard sandwhich, or the salami & cheese on baguette with roasted pappers and argula, or the pumpernickel baguettes, or the great daily specials? I really wish I could go to lunch there every day.

I guess Busboys & Poets was a chain even before the upcoming locations because the owner owned other restaurants, and the same goes for places like Cafe Atlantico. They’re all bad guys now? Well, at least the chain club, Platinum, already got shut down. That owner has other clubs, and we don’t want a chain club in our neighborhood.

#15 nailed it.

What is Times Square but McD’s, Red Lobster, Virgin Records, TGI Fri, Toy R Us and ESPN Zone on steroids?

Same goes for the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.

PQ, like those areas, is too expensive for small mom and pop resturants. That doesn’t mean those cities, like DC, don’t have local establishments in other parts of the city.

A city that doesn’t have chains usually means that something is wrong with the given city.

Should we boot Matchbox out too? They are about to be a chain once their 2nd location opens in a few months. Let’s be reasonable.

I would recommend one chain club, the Gold Club. It has the best women you can find, I think DC needs this establishment. I would also like to finance a gun store, once the federal government allows them to open in the District. Everyone should feel the rush of some firepower.

Chains! Chains! You people don’t know what it’s like to live in a city overrun by chains. Having grown up in the Tampa Bay area (which gave the world Outback, Hooters, Bonefish, Melting Pot, and Carrabas to name a few) I know what it’s like to live in a city that is overrun by chains. Sure, Chinatown and overrun by the likes of Ruby Tuesdays and Legal Seafood, and Penn Quarter is starting to see places like Chop’t move in, but there is still an abundance of great restaurants to choose from (Central, Poste and Oyamel spring to mind). Nah, y’all aren’t overrun by chains. Not even close. That’s why D.C. is still a great city and Penn Quarter is still such a nice neighborhood. Overrun by chains. Please.

Kelby – In the works so I hear from reliable sources

Ah, but Matchbox is already a chain – they have locations in California. Maybe we should picket outisde there one night? Seriously, I think you have to differentiate between chains that have 1 – 2 location in a given metro area (so that people will still come to that area to patronize that business) vs. chains that saturate a market like McD’s and Starbucks. Arguably, there’s a place for both types, so long as the saturation model doesn’t take over the entire neighborhood. In my opinion, they haven’t in PQ. I think we have a great mix of “superchains” (Ruby Tuesday’s), smaller chains (Fado), and indies (Zola, indieblue). Same on the retail side with Bed Bath & Beyond, Zara, and Mia Gemma, for example.

After I meantioned Chop’t in a negative night on my blog, the owner emailed me and made me realize that it is in fact, a small, and what I would consider, local business.

I was defensive initially, but then realized that he was right. The stores have a chain aesthetic, but in actuality they are just two hardworking guys running a growing small business.