A Scoop from the Golden Age

(Eddie's exterior. Image from Yelp.)

Occupying a beloved corner space on Metropolitan Avenue for over a century, Eddie’s Sweet Shop in Forest Hills maintains its reputation due to an old-fashioned approach to serving America’s favorite dessert. Antiquity radiates from within this ice-cream parlor, as everything from the marble countertop, to the homemade soda floats, to the vintage cash register seems embalmed in a long-gone era when sweets, prepared with a localized family-owned passion, felt equally splendid on the tongue and heart.

[Note: Let me acknowledge that the past, when viewed from posterity, always seems infinitely better than it in fact was. That’s beside the point here. When a store can in the present encapsulate the past’s ideal and keep it feeling genuine, it has inarguably achieved something great.]

But nostalgia for those chrome postwar years aside (how many Hollywood cameras have passed through its doors?), Eddie’s can still deliver on its renowned signature product. The ice-cream – and especially the beverages, be they milkshakes, malts or floats with the soda brewed right in front of you – is usually thick, rich, and poised to clean the most soiled pallet. Ice-cream scooped from a vat in a freezer, however, can be inconsistent no matter where it comes from, so I advise the uninitiated customer to stick with soft-serve. No other such shop in the immediate vicinity (read: all of New York City) could match it.

The milkshakes, though, hold a notable distinction among my taste buds. Every time, Eddie’s serves me what is easily the best milkshake I have ever tasted. I’ve slurped up some fine milkshakes in my day. A handful of anonymous diners come close. Marvel, a seasonal parlor out on Long Island, comes close. Larry’s, which I plan to profile once I return to Washington, can hold its own. But Eddie’s has invariably proven itself to reign high above the rest, and probably always will.

Rustic entities have a hard time avoiding obsolescence. Quite often they visibly decline, and the shop’s cracked floors and rickety metal stools might put off an unknowing patron. Admittedly, any old building comes afflicted with the petty nuisances of age. But should an ice-cream parlor that looks fit for James Dean appear pristine and squeaky-clean fifty years after the Eisenhower Age ended? For me, the shop’s archaic qualities, be they charming or inconvenient, validate its relevance and enhance the overall experience of frequenting it.

In a time when everything we eat and enjoy seems pre-prepared by dispassionate machines in a far-off factory, a taste of some down-home, simplistic, fundamentally humane ice-cream from a longtime local staple goes to show that we have done, and continue to do, better that what we are used to. Thankfully shops like Eddie’s, despite growing rarer with each passing year, are still around to remind us.

A Bistro at Once Cool and Unpretentious

(D.C. Bread & Brew exterior. Even the ampersand seems ingenuous. Image from dcbeer.)

The monoliths of Foggy Bottom start to give way to the smaller, more charming dwellings of Dupont Circle somewhere between M and N streets NW. It is amid this abrupt shift in architectural tone that a mesa-colored, one-story café called D.C. Bread & Brew appropriately cuts off the huge glass federal building preceding it on 20th Street, welcoming passersby going north to an altogether new neighborhood. Here, a government worker on lunch break can sit on the front deck or inside on leather chairs and sip coffee, eat sandwiches and temporally feel like a human being again. Or, Dupont Circle denizens can rendezvous and enjoy the cozy, conscientious atmosphere befitting to any good cosmopolitan.

Around noon on warmer days the few tables out front fill up quickly, but sitting inside when the fans run remains pleasant enough. Order at the counter choosing from a narrow selection of pizzas, paninis, quiche, salads, and a daily special or two priced around $12, the most expensive meal on the menu. A wider breadth of drink offerings boasts organic coffees, teas and wine along with some beers of varying obscurity. Depending on the order, a polite and obsequious server, who always addresses the customer using formal titles (my name was, a bit goofily, Mr. Matt) will carry out the dish anywhere from 5-10 minutes later. Some orders will take a while even with crowds absent.

The quiche, whether of meat or vegetables, is at least two-and-a-half inches thick with a firm crust and rich taste. Order sandwiches on crispy ciabatta bread and prepare to taste one of the better paninis in the District. A reasonable lunch special consists of half a sandwich and a salad with dressing temperately applied. Dishes come and go at a moderate pace, but rarely does one feel rushed by the staff. I’ve sat and read for hours at a small circular table in the dim corner without anyone trying to hurry me along, even after the plate before me had long since disappeared.

It’s not daunting task to find a cool, comfortable coffee shop in the area (see The District Java Roundup Parts I, II and III). Nor are locals hard-pressed for an organic eatery conducive to urbane time-wasting. But with superior food and a natural, welcoming aura, D.C. Bread & Brew rises to a higher level. It doesn’t seem to try in achieving sophistication. It simply achieves it, transcending expectations for an establishment of its sort in a neighborhood like its own. Anyone wandering up on the right street from the city’s financial district must get a fine impression.