The Great American Saloon Series / Power Drinking at Duke's

Bakshian, Aram Jr.

0 rdinarily, I detest "power bars." The minute a place earns a reputation as one it begins to attract flies. But I have this ungovernable lust for genuine, barrel-cured kosher dills, and Duke...

...Slumped at the end of the bar was a manic-depressive radio reporter whose prolonged stays in Haiti during the last days of "Baby Doc" Duvalier's regime—and his own attempts at self-embalmingthrough the medium of alcohol—had earned him the nickname "White Zombie...
...B ut it was not the chance to see Bill smirk or hear Hillary's shrillery that had made a Duke's regular of me...
...Sometimes the generations meet, as on an evening last July when Ilooked out of the bar and into the reception area in response to a sudden trampling of feet and flashing of cameras...
...Now in his eighties, with a scraggly, tonsured mane of white hair, he sometimes shuffles in wearing a golf cap and toting a large shopping bag...
...Stifling the impulse to chant "Three more years...
...A Duke's regular, Strauss had brokered the oddly coupled dinner...
...Although his son Randy runs most of the day to day operations, Duke is still very 'much part of the picture, cracking jokes with cronies and banishing boors from the premises...
...A man of many talents, he is an accomplished writer and photographer and, believe it or not, a member of the Secular Franciscan Order...
...Former ambassador and longtime Democratic strategist Robert Strauss brought up the rear...
...What is a deacon?' he asked...
...Washington being Washington, and Duke's being Duke's, I was sure I would bump into a few people I knew...
...He asked me if I knew what St...
...hope he will continue doing just that for many a year to come, for there is no other place quite like Duke's geriatric power bar in Washington...
...I had lunched there many times before making it one of my regular watering holes, and had enjoyed the onion rolls and pickles as much as the main courses...
...Unfortunately, I was right in the worst possible way...
...Restaurant workers are exactly that: attendants...
...So, too, have a number of the staff, one of the acid tests of a first-rate saloon...
...the bar and restaurant are usually filled with an eclectic mix of sports writers, jocks, touts, legislators, lobbyists, lawyers, reporters, tax accountants, real estate barons, and media biggies, mostly of a certain vintage...
...But Sam's career as a conjuring publican, and the charms of the Town and Country lounge, are the stuff of another story...
...Duke's specializes in hearty, New York deli–style ancienne cuisine of the, chicken soup, 13eef Stroganoff and stuffed cabbage variety, along with a sprinkling of tempting regional, seasonal specialties, such as soft-shell crabs, shad roe, and excellent Maryland crabcakes...
...He informed the spiritual assistant of the order, Father Stephen Sabbagh, of his reservations...
...Any man willing to defend his favorite brand of beer to the death is my kind of guy...
...I turned my attention to my cocktail, a concoction of beef bouillon and vodka, the name of which nearly sums up my opinion of the Clinton administration to date: Bullshot...
...only to be warned by the fellow seated next to me that I was drawing on his private stock...
...it is the man who must sanctify the place and the occupation...
...He heads a bustling staff of Farsis, Greeks, Chinese, and Latinos who, on a good evening, are as much a part of the banter and repartee as the customers...
...Taking advantage of the cover it provided, I slipped around the corner of the bar, lit a cigar and ordered a bottle of Beck's Dark...
...Duke Zeibert himself is also a celebrity of sorts...
...Luckily, W. Z. was engaged in heated debate with an over-painted PR woman, who was wearing a hat that looked like a manhole cover festooned with last week's salad bar remnants...
...Even some of the VIP guests are quite pleasant...
...It is good, simple—if not particularly memorable—fare, but abandon all hope of low cholesterol, ye who enter Duke's...
...A nother star of the place is Duke's maitre d', Al, an animated, gregarious Iranian who speaks flawless French and has a mischievous sense of humor...
...But I have this ungovernable lust for genuine, barrel-cured kosher dills, and Duke Zeibert's is one of the few Washington restaurants where you can get them...
...The solid, slightly passé menu 'and atmosphere have attracted Washington's old-line elite for nearly half a century...
...He was, sadly, without his charming wife Elizabeth, who heads the American Red Cross (better to have an expert at first aid handy when rivals meet...
...Father Stephen said that the word deacon comes from the Greek word diakonos, which means attendant...
...The senior bartender, Nick Wineriter, is an affable, intelligent master dispenser in his early forties...
...While I like the simile, its very ingenuity leads me to believe that Father Stephen is a trifle Jesuitical for a Franciscan, As for Nick, he finds further solace in a favorite passage from Alexandre de Rouville's Imitation of Mary: "It is not the place nor the occupation that sanctifies a man...
...There they were: Lard Butt and Piano Legs...
...I've enjoyed more than one lunch with cabinet members and publishing moguls at Duke Zeibert's...
...Accompanying President and Mrs...
...Their memory and theirs alone was why I found myself making for the southwest corner of Connecticut Avenue and L Street on a fateful happy hour in 1989, ducking into Washington Square, the shimmering steel-and-crystal officeand-shopping complex in which Duke's occupies most of the second floor...
...On top of everything else, it is only half a block away from another Great American Saloon, the Town and Country bar at the historic old Mayflower Hotel...
...Just the place for a nightcap (the last drink at Duke's is usually served by eleven), the bar at the Mayflower is presided over by Sam, Washington's—and perhaps the world's—only Cambodian-born magician/bartender...
...Bob Blumel, a widely traveled editor/publisher with a kaleidoscopic subject range, has since become a good friend...
...He told me St...
...Clinton was an old acquaintance of mine, Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole...
...Duke's has become a kind of living museum, a geriatric power bar, an indoor, booze-fueled Jurassic Park filled with influential dinosaurs and the occasional newer model...
...The walls are lined with pictures of Duke greeting presidents and sports greats, and trophies won by the Washington Redskins...
...Francis was...
...Francis was a deacon...
...Shortly before he was professed, Nick 'ound himself wrestling with the seeming incongruity of being both a lay deacon and a bartender...
...You also pick up the occasional interesting tidbit about the lifestyles of the rich and infamous (e.g., according to informed sources, talk show host Larry King is a lousy tipper...
...On one memorable evening, when Duke was looking a little more rumpled than usual, I overheard an out-of-town guest—alas, as a capital landmark, the place_gets its share of tourists—mutter knowingly to his wife, "They wouldn't allow bag people like that in here if Duke Zeibert was still running the place...
...I told him that I couldn't reconcile being a Franciscan and working in a bar...
...It was the thought of those near-perfect pickles, nestled in their silver tub and wafting a delicate hint of garlic...

Vol. 26 • October 1993 • No. 10


 
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