Upgrading A Cleveland Park Bar
By Fritz Hahn
Washington Post Weekend Section
Friday, March 10, 2006

Losing a popular local hangout is tough, but two -- in the same week no less -- is a serious blow. Cleveland Park faced a double hit last spring when the owners of Brick's Tavern and the Park Bench Pub declared bankruptcy and then faced liquidation. Just like that, thousands of singles and young professionals lost the neighborhood's best places to watch sports and found themselves with two fewer places to head after work or on Friday night, whether for late-night dancing at the basement-level Park Bench or to soak in the sun on the rooftop deck at Brick's. Both were, admittedly, running unevenly and looking shoddy by the end, but they still had loyal patrons.

It took almost six months for the two spaces to reopen under new ownership, and although they initially looked like carbon copies of the previous occupants, they're beginning to take on personalities of their own.

The building that houses Cleveland Park Bar & Grill -- formerly Brick's, and before that, Coppi's Vigorelli -- has always had unrealized potential, thanks to a rooftop deck, an extra long bar, high ceilings and a wood-fired pizza oven in the kitchen. That's why I was curious to learn that the new owners were Peter Balish and Jeff Holibaugh, formerly of the hot dance club Vida, and Fabio and Patricia Beggiato, who run the restaurant-cum-nightspots Sesto Senso and Andalu -- not the kind of team you'd associate with a neighborhood sports bar and tavern.

"Jeff and I knew the previous owners," Balish explains, "and when they went into bankruptcy, we got a call from a lawyer asking if we wanted to put in a bid."

Familiar with the business and the neighborhood, they thought they could make the place work where others couldn't. "We wanted to keep [the concept] the same," Balish says, "but we wanted to give it a huge upgrade."

The result is a space that wants to be your neighborhood Italian restaurant, go-to place for game-watching and upscale watering hole for hanging out on Saturday night.

Cleveland Park Bar & Grill keeps the layout pretty much the same: High, round bar tables and booths run along the left of the long, rectangular building, facing a heavy wooden bar and a row of televisions mounted on the wall (15 in all). Tables and more booths fill a smaller dining area in the rear. The building's makeover brought a rich, bordello-red paint job and a new display of artsy portraits of Washington landmarks, including the Capitol and the Cleveland Park Metro station. (The choice spot is still the table in the large front picture window, just under the biggest high-definition screen in the building.) On weekends and during college basketball games, televisions are the star attraction. Most screens are near or directly over the bar, providing generally unhindered sightlines.

The bar is only one part of the room, though, and standing space is at a premium during big games, so Balish and his partners bought three new high-definition units to hang in the dining area, so customers who've come for dinner -- or just wanted to snag a table for their group -- can catch the action, as well as a view of that brick pizza oven. A legacy of the Neapolitan restaurant Coppi's Vigorelli, it has become the centerpiece of the Beggiatos' new menu. Although there's an interesting list of pasta dishes and Italian meats to explore, most of the crowd seem to fall into two camps: those eating pizza and those sticking to the bar food, especially the spicy wings.

Like many wood-fired pizzas, the restaurant's offerings can be inconsistent. The white pizza will be great one time, with wonderfully gooey cheeses and a crispy edge, but it can also arrive with a burnt crust and a gooey middle wet with olive oil.

For this weekend's basketball conference finals and the NCAA tournament, "we'll be open all day, showing every game," Balish promises, adding there will be some happy hour specials, such as $2 Miller Lites from noon to 2 Thursday. "We already have about 100 people who are slipping out of work that day" -- mostly friends and regulars -- so the bar is taking table reservations. (And drawing on its experiences with the VIP rooms at Vida, a $200 to $300 minimum tab is required, which seems really high to me.)

There are only so many hours of basketball in a day, though, and while I appreciate the efforts of the bartenders, who try to keep things lively by suggesting martinis or inventive shots, Cleveland Park Bar & Grill's transition from sports bar to regular bar can be a bit jarring. The featured game ends, the lights dim and the sound switches from Dick Vitale to the Internet jukebox, which begins blasting Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine." Meanwhile, the televisions are still showing silent, endless loops of "SportsCenter," Colombian soccer or high school basketball skills competitions. I'll stick around for another pint of beer -- there are 12 taps, plus a dozen wines by the glass -- but the atmosphere doesn't really make me want to hang out all night. (And the whirling ceiling fans are ineffectual at breaking up the smoke at the bar.)

Balish speaks of starting a weekend brunch after the Final Four, but I'm more curious about the opening of the rooftop deck. "We're not going to open it until we have it the way we want it," Balish says. The partners bought three flat-screen televisions just for the roof, and though they are feeling pressure to get it open as soon as warm weather arrives, Balish wants to avoid a situation "where the downstairs is nice and the upstairs looks like a fraternity deck."