Saving Green: Happy Hour at Vegetate
By Fritz Hahn
Washington Post Weekend Section
Friday, April 13, 2007
It has been a year since I first wrote about Vegetate, the vegetarian restaurant and lounge owned by prominent local DJ Dominic Redd (known on the scene as DJ Dredd) and his wife, Jennifer. They wanted to open a chic spot that would combine upscale vegetarian and vegan food with a cool lounge atmosphere, bringing the Shaw neighborhood a hangout it badly needed.
But just before the restaurant opened in late 2005, the nearby Shiloh Baptist Church launched an eleventh-hour protest, claiming that a restaurant serving alcohol would negatively affect the neighborhood and that Vegetate was a nightclub, not a restaurant, and would attract late-night crowds. Besides, the church's lawyers argued, the restaurant was within 400 feet of Seaton Elementary School, and therefore, according to D.C. law, wasn't allowed to serve alcohol.
Vegetate struggled for more than a year without a liquor license, and although it was possible to hear Redd spin on the occasional Saturday, the lounge scene was nonexistent. Then, at a final appeals hearing before the city's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board last month, the witnesses protesting on behalf of Shiloh failed to show up, so Vegetate received permission to serve alcohol.
If you haven't checked out Vegetate, the best time to go is Wednesday's happy hour, when local DJ Dave Nada takes over the turntables from 7 to 9 and vegetarian sliders are $1 each.
Nada, a resident at DC9's monthly Crowd Control and the weekly Taxlo party at Sonar in Baltimore, cuts between Prince, Daft Punk and his own remixes of Swedish pop tunes -- music that's more about setting the mood than setting off the dance floor. (Convenient, since there's not much room to dance.) This is a lounge where most people are perched in groups.
"I'd known Dave and his girlfriend, Abby [Sexton, now a Vegetate bartender], for a while," Dominic Redd explains. "They came in a couple of times before we had the ABC license. We weren't getting a lot of people in. [Nada] said, 'I want to play here and help you guys out through the rough patch.' He was there for two months before we got the liquor license."
The organic vibe carries over to the drinks. Ales from Wolaver's, an organic brewery in Vermont, sit alongside a spicy organic pinot noir from Oregon. Cocktails include the Green Tea Cool Out, a refreshing blend of green-tea-infused vodka, agave nectar and lemon juice.
If you're hoping to catch DJ Dredd himself, he's trying to perform as often as he can on Saturday nights, but running the restaurant takes priority at the moment. "Soon, though," he says.
