Extra spicy

In an otherwise insightful post on food policy and the incoming Obama administration, blogger Ezra Klein takes an off-the-mark pot shot at Ben's Chili Bowl.  "(One of DC's most overrated institutions, incidentally)," Klein remarks on Ben's.  I've waited to see if there would be a clarifying post, but none has come.  Ergo, it's on.  

This is wrong.  Horribly, horribly wrong.   Ben's is both symbolically and literally a significant marker of Washington in the post-war era.  Its history is real, and it is meaningful, even if some in the blognoscenti choose to ignore it.  Imagine if someone said that Katz's Deli wasn't a worthy New York institution, or Pat's could be skipped on a tour of Philadelphia.  They'd be laughed out of town.

 

To be generous, maybe Klein meant that the food at Ben's is overrated.  Still wrong.  Horribly, horribly wrong.  Maybe he doesn't like it.  That's fine.  But as one of Klein's commenters notes Ben's does chili dogs, cheese fries, and half-smokes,  all day and most of the night, come riots or construction.  No place else in DC, to my knowledge, hits this market--it's surprisingly hard to find a half-smoke on the street-- and while it's not haute cuisine, it's hot cuisine at affordable prices, even after the gentrification of U Street.  And nobody, to my knowledge, has ever claimed that Ben's was up for Michelin stars.

In the lingo of Bill Simmons, and one of the commenters, Ben's is properly rated.  The hype is big, for sure, but it backs it up.