Capital Spice

If there was one common complaint about Hank’s Oyster Bar, Chef Jamie Leeds’ “urban beach food” venue, it was that there just wasn’t enough room.  Regulars and first-timers alike would often find the small space, located in a Q Street townhouse near Dupont Circle, filled to capacity (capacity being 65 or so) from happy hour to closing time.  Six years later, Hank’s is all growed up.

Yesterday evening marked the opening of Hank’s new Lounge, next door to (and incorporating) the original space.  With this welcome expansion, Hank’s has effectively doubled its indoor seating capacity.  An outdoor patio allows for another 40 diners, which means they’ll be doing a whole lot of additional shucking at the raw bar.

Fortunately, they’ve expanded that, too.  The bar that used to serve Hank’s has been stripped of its beer taps and will now serve as the raw bar.  The best part?  They’ve kept the bar seating there, giving a lucky few a ringside seat to watch the shuckers work their magic.

More on the new layout, including some nautically inspired new rooms and a look at some new food items (can you say “never-before-seen oyster variety?”) after the jump. (more…)

When we heard that Chef Jamie Leeds was selling CommonWealth Gastropub in Columbia Heights to focus on an expansion of her original Hank’s Oyster Bar, our thoughts turned to the only one of her restaurants unaffected by the news: the second Hank’s in Alexandria.  While there are some restaurants we haven’t written about because we don’t have many nice things to say, our silence regarding Hank’s is more a reflection on its role as a solid go-to for oysters, seafood and even brunch in Old Town.  We rarely plan our visits, so we don’t tend to have a camera with us when we stop in for a bite.

Now you know we love good oysters.  You’ve heard us tell the tales of Oyster Riots passed, and we shared our love of the oyster happy hour at Johnny’s Half Shell years ago.  So you can understand at least part of the reason we’re happy to keep coming back to Hank’s.  But the menu, with its daily specials and its emphasis on classic preparations of fish and seafood, has offered us plenty of reasons to visit beyond a few briny morsels every now and then.

A few of our favorite things from the sea after the jump.

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