In February 2009, Tom Sietsema wrote about Spider Kelly's as part of a longer review.

Burger and a beer? At Spider Kelly's, the young watering hole in Clarendon, I tend to amend the alliterative bar request and ask for soup instead of a sandwich with my suds. Although the menu plays up its burgers, bulking up one choice with pork fat and selling all of them for half-price ($4) on Tuesdays, the chicken soup merits serious attention. It's a bowl your mom might dish up if your mom had whipped up her own stock, using the bones from roast chicken, thrown in plenty of carrots and seasoned the soup with fresh thyme and parsley. The strapping starter is priced for Everyman: $5.

The restaurant is the brainchild of Nick Freshman, 32, and Nick Langman, 33, chums from their days attending Edmund Burke, a private high school in Northwest Washington. Langman co-owns Clarendon Ballroom. Freshman has lots of restaurant experience, including stints at the Ballroom, Five Guys, Poste and Olives.

They aimed high when they launched their small restaurant last summer. As Freshman puts it, the business partners wanted "a bar with exceptional food." To that end, they, along with chef Dennis Camacho, late of the nearby Clarendon Grill, go a step or two further than other pubs. The bun on those burgers is good enough to eat on its own, the french fries are tasty with rosemary and fried garlic, and house-pickled vegetables add color and zest to the plates. The portion sizes suggest linebackers are eating the food; the quality of some of it encourages overconsumption.

You can't go wrong with poultry here, whether it's the aforementioned soup, a plate of meaty wings or a main course. In one entree, fresh chicken is fried to a shattering crisp a la Popeyes; in another, it's spiked with garlic and cumin and able to pass for the kind of bird available at your favorite Latino rotisserie. Both are first brined, both are juicy and both are extremely satisfying.

I never warmed up to the burgers here. (The addition of pork fat in one gives the ground beef a funky taste. Another time, my request for "medium-rare" translated as raw.) But the shrimp po' boy, dressed up with a tangy tangle of slaw, and the grilled steak, glossy with shallot butter, sustained my interest from visit to visit.

The vegetarian at my table didn't go away hungry, but he didn't sample the kitchen's best efforts, either. Curly pasta with spinach, red peppers and a splash of cream tasted like one of those meals you whip up from a little of this and a little of that in the refrigerator. "Cardiac" macaroni and cheese is listed as a side dish but is big enough to qualify as a meal, although it's so underseasoned, I don't think anyone would want more than a few bites. I like the kitchen's green salads, though, which include a hill of chopped romaine tossed with crisp green beans and red pepper strips and moistened with a creamy buttermilk-based dressing.

The service runs casual and efficient ("Seat yourself," a server suggests), and the Nicks put some thought into the look of their lounge-y space. It's dark and seductive, with arty photographs shot by Freshman's brother (and the general manager) Ben on the walls and a small black-granite bar near the front window that dispenses half-price wine, beer and rail drinks on Sundays and Mondays between 5 and 8 p.m.

Chocolate chip cookies are baked to order, and they show up with a glass of milk. Banana cream pudding, embellished with vanilla wafers and whipped cream, went around and around my table until there was not a lick left. It was a comfort, much like Spider Kelly's.

(Sunday, Feb. 8, 2009)

A lot of restaurants serve double-cooked fries these days. A lot of chefs are also sprinkling the snack with herbs. Order fries at the new Spider Kelly's, and out comes a bowl heaped with the expected hand-cut potatoes and bits of rosemary, but also fried garlic cloves. "People who know" how tasty cooked garlic is "dig right in" and pluck out the soft centers, says Nick Freshman.

He's one of two locals and former high school buddies, both named Nick and both 32 years old, behind the July addition to the Clarendon neighborhood. "We've always wanted a bar with exceptional food," says Freshman, who owns the business with Nick Langman.

Their moody, monochromatic bar and 73-seat dining room are named after a character in "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway because Freshman, an English major in college, always liked the name. "I kept it in my back pocket," he says.

Neither Nick is new to the trade. Langman is co-owner of the nearby Clarendon Ballroom; Freshman worked in various capacities at Clarendon Ballroom, a branch of Five Guys, Poste, Olives and the Clarendon Grill. The address for their joint venture once housed Queen Bee, then India Curry House. The latter's two tandoor ovens were removed to make way for two grills, a fryer and an oven.

Spider Kelly's menu is a breeze to read: a half-dozen starters followed by burgers in different guises and a handful of entrees. Yet the surprises run from skewered lemon grass beef to cookies and milk for dessert. Freshman says he's proud of the attention to detail that goes into the food. The beef for the plain burger is ground fresh each day, perched on a roll from Uptown Bakers and garnished with house-made pickles instead of the usual commercially made spear. Drop by on a Monday night and the sandwich is half-price: $4 instead of $8.

Indeed, every night delivers a different deal. Regulars know that Tuesday means all microbrews are $3.50 and that Sundays can be toasted with half-price bottles of wine. Spider Kelly's is open only for dinner right now, but that's seven days a week, from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.

When I unexpectedly catch Freshman on the phone one morning, he jokes, "We're not usually in before noon."

Burgers and entrees, $7-$14.

-- Tom Sietsema (First Bite, Sept. 3, 2008)