DINING GUIDE OF THE PAST
Cleveland Park Gets Colder: Farewell Yenching Palace
Originally posted 2007
No other stretch of street in Washington DC has been the scene of so many wonderful establishments as Connecticut Ave. NW between Macomb and Porter Streets has been. This strip became a mini-downtown for the neighborhood of Cleveland Park in the 1920s. It still includes one of the first shopping centers ever, built in 1930.
Around that time, restaurateur Frank Abbo moved his Roma Restaurant into a long row of storefronts on the avenue's east side where it remained for about 65 years, augmented by Frank's son, Bobby's Poor Robert's Tavern. Frank Abbo was a big and small game hunter who filled his dining room with horned trophies hung on walls painted as a 360-degree mural of the African veldt. On Saturday nights, spaghetti could be downed with the accompaniment of a pianist and violinist and in late summer, an outdoor dining area in back would be heavy with arbored grapes that were harvested and danced upon in a vat before diners' eyes. Always a great date place, The Roma was "The Florentine Garden" in my story "Brave Soldier" in Tales From Old Bethesda.
Across Connecticut Avenue from the Roma was and still is a great and genuine Irish Pub with blood sausage on the menu and queer looks if one orders Miller High Life. Long known as Ireland's Four Provinces, nickname "4P's," it has lately been renamed Ireland's Four Fields. It is hoped that the name is all the changing that will be made. The 4P's interior is still the same as it was 25 years ago when The Clancy Brothers used to come and play. Live entertainment is almost incessant during operating hours and on weekend afternoons, it's a family place where the Irish dancing schools bring their girls to perform.
Up Connecticut Ave. from the Four P's, past the 70-year-old Uptown Theater where many a movie has premiered in Washington, is the subject of this lament, the landmark Yenching Palace.
