Sweet Home Café, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture

[porcupine]

Opening Menu:

[Mark Dedrick]

Just a few quick comments based on a single visit this past weekend:

• It's really crowded. When we, at around 2 pm or so, tried to get into the cafe portion we had to queue up like at an amusement park for about a half hour to get into the cafe itself.
• There are four separate stations you go to to order your food (to align with the four regions highlighted above). Due to how crowded the place is, this means that it would be extremely time consuming to try to order, say, a main from one station and a side from another (or at least that was our read of the situation). 
• They were out of a lot of things! For example, I wanted to get the Oxtail Pepper Pot, only to discover when I arrived at the North States station that they didn't have that. Looking around, the other stations were already swamped, so I went with the Oyster Pan Roast. My wife had a similar issue with a side she wanted to order at the Creole Coast station.
• It's pretty slow. My oyster pan roast was cooked to order, which was a very nice touch, but it did mean that even being third in line at that station I had to wait maybe ten minutes for the two people in front of me to be taken care of before I could even order, and then additional time before my order was ready. This is probably a fixable problem (many of these are fixable problems except for the crowding). 
• The food was, I would say, pretty good. The oysters were tasty, the broth was good, and the whole thing was fine. It's among the better museum dining options in the district, and given how long you are likely to spend at the museum (we were there for more than five hours) you'll probably want to re-fuel after finishing the below-ground exhibits and before tackling those up above this is definitely the spot to hit. 

[DonRocks]

On 12/7/2016 at 6:57 PM, Mark Dedrick said:

Just a few quick comments based on a single visit this past weekend:

In many ways, this sounds like a version of Mitsitam Cafe - would you agree with that?

[DaveO]

4 hours ago, DonRocks said:

In many ways, this sounds like a version of Mitsitam Cafe - would you agree with that?

On my one visit I'd say that was exactly what I experienced at the Mitsitam Cafe.  It was very crowded that particular day and hour(s). 

[Mark Dedrick]

On 12/9/2016 at 9:43 AM, DonRocks said:

In many ways, this sounds like a version of Mitsitam Cafe - would you agree with that?

I think that's a fair comparison. It's been a few years since I've eaten at Mitsitam Cafe, but they are definitely similar. In my one visit to Sweet Home Cafe it seemed harder to navigate and more confusing, but that could very well just be a function of the sheer volume of people. 

[saxdrop]

It seems no coincidence Sweet Home resembles Mitsitam since Jerome Grant left the latter to start the former

Although it also seems as if quality-wise the move was zero sum.

 

 

[DonRocks]

I recently had dinner at Sweet Home Café, and it was terrific (the brisket was leaps-and-bounds better than what I had at Texas Jack's this week - don't let the looks deceive you). The fried chicken was sensational, and every bit the brisket's equal: If you haven't eaten here, you should go - the museum is currently using a "no-reservations" policy for September which, hopefully, is a harbinger of things to come.

I recently went on a "barbecued mutton" tour of Owensboro, KY, and this is how some places serve it - slapped on a piece of Wonder bread. I can't envision a scenario where this brisket was actually barbecued-proper, but it was still the best brisket I've had in quite awhile:

 <--- I know these don't "look" great, but they were absolutely delicious!

Honoring John McCain:

A remembrance of Patrick Clark (winner of the James Beard Award for Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic, btw)

And Chuck Berry drove a wicked Cadillac: