Friday, July 27, 2007

Farewell to Soup and Nuts

This week Washington bids farewell to two Things You Thought Would Never Go Away.

AV Italian Ristorante is shutting its doors after 50-some years of red sauce and surliness, succumbing to development pressure in a rapidly-redeveloping part of DC. Laura and I went there once and always meant to go back. It reminded me a bit of an Italian restaurant I worked at in high school, which featured a German war-bride cook and occasionally potty-mouthed Italian senior citizen waitresses. (The restaurant, not high school.)

Longtime patron Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia got his final meal at AV comped, but only because he praised the "original construction" of the shrimp scampi.

Also this week, Candey Hardware closed after over 100 years in business. Our nostalgia is tempered by the inability of the staff to provide what we actually needed on our last two visits, but its copper-clad storefront was a nice throwback compared to its glass, steel and concrete neighbors.

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