Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurants. Show all posts

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Strathmore music venue coming to Pike & Rose


It's a jumbled mess of cranes, dirt and skeletal structures now, but by next year the first phase of Federal Realty's Pike & Rose, arguably the centerpiece project of efforts to transform the White Flint area into a dense, quasi-urban neighborhood, will be open for business. And the list of businesses and amenities on the way continues to be very exciting.

As reported on the Friends of White Flint blog, Phase One will include both 18 story and four story residential buildings with street-level retail, a green/performance space, an 80,000 SF office building, and an iPic movie replete with a Tanzy Restaurant, Salt Bar and--perhaps most enticing--a music club situated above the theater that will be built to host both indoor and open-air performances.

Earlier this week, we received some additional details about what that music club will be like when it was announced that the Strathmore music hall would be opening the performance space above the theater. According to the Washington Business Journal, the space will include a 250 seat concert venue, an 1,100 SF "function space," a green room, and doors that can be opened during performances in warmer months.

Image courtesy of Federal Realty Trust

According to a press release issued by Strathmore, the venue will feature "intimate jazz, rock, folk and contemporary performances, as well as a variety of well established, trend-setting touring acts.”

This will be the first expansion for Strathmore beyond their original campus, approximately 1.5 miles south of the Pike & Rose development off of Rockville Pike.

Other businesses currently slated to arrive as part of the Phase One development include a 2 Amy's-style pizzeria and a cafe/wine bar. Phase Two is set to kick off in February 2014, when ground will be broken on four additional buildings.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Restaurant news: Rockville Ale House opens, Vegetable Garden closes

Following on the September opening in Rockville of popular DC restaurant Chef Geoffs in the former Houston's/Againn space, another new dining spot has hit the Rockville/North Bethesda scene. Rockville Pike became home to the nation's 57th Miller's Ale House, which opened recently at 1471 Rockville Pike, just north of the Congressional shopping plaza.


Miller's doesn't purport to offer anything particularly groundbreaking in either its food offerings or its drink menu. Its website boasts: "Can’t decide between a steak, fresh seafood or Buffalo wings? Our restaurant menu has it all," while the beer offerings won't be giving the always fantastic Gilly's a run for its money anytime soon. Still, it's an option to kick back with some drinks and pub fare in front of a bunch of TVs in a part of suburbia surprisingly lacking in such options. So I guess the people at Miller's did their research. The Ale House will be open till 2 AM Monday through Saturday, and until midnight on Sundays.

A bit farther down the Pike (and a bit late in delivering this news), a longtime Asian staple has closed its doors. The Vegetable Garden, which had a devoted following among those who crave good vegetarian Chinese cooking, shut down after a lengthy run in the strip mall across the street from the White Flint Metro station. Apparently the inevitable "lease issues" were to blame, with the strip mall owner in search of new tenants and having no qualms about losing old ones. (Witness the opening of the sex shop, La Tache, at the end of the strip mall.)


According to those who spoke with the owners, there are no plans to reopen. Another restaurant in the strip mall, Mediterranean House of Kabob, closed briefly earlier this year also following a dispute with the landlord. It has subsequently reopened.

For those still looking to get their vegetarian Chinese fix in Rockville, well, there remains no shortage of options. Chief among them is Yuan Fu, a bit farther north up the Pike.