Why D.C. loves Ben's Chili Bowl

Ben’s Chili Bowl isn’t just a spot to grab lunch or a hangover half-smoke; it’s a cultural institution. The original U Street restaurant has served a signature D.C. dish to everyone from hardworking laborers to Hollywood celebrities, all while bearing witness to a neighborhood in flux.

Ben’s was founded by Ben and Virginia Ali in 1958 and has stayed in the family since then. Kamal “Ben” Ali remembers being a pre-teen, helping his parents at the restaurant. “My earliest memories were going down there with my mom and emptying out a jukebox and a cigarette machine. We would take the quarters out, and I'd be able to count [them],” he told me in a recent interview.

Today, Ali is a second-generation family owner at Ben’s, which has expanded to multiple locations in the D.C. area and sells its chili and half-smokes at Costco and Giant Food stores.

Over the years, Ben’s has been recognized both locally and nationally. The neighboring alley is officially named Ben Ali Way, and the restaurant has won an America’s Classics award from the James Beard Foundation, while Ben and Virginia were given a key to the city and have been inducted into the D.C. Hall of Fame – to name just a few of the accolades they received over the years.

In July, the flagship restaurant closed for extensive renovations to ensure decades of continued business.

“This is the first time we've ever done a full front-to-back renovation — so new plumbing, new electric. We’re really setting up the new infrastructure for the next 50, 60, 70 years,” says Ali, who expects the restaurant to reopen this month, coinciding with his mom’s 92nd birthday. “We’re very excited to still have her with us,” he says. (When Ben Ali died in 2009, Virginia passed on the business to her sons and their wives.)

If you’re new to the city — or even if you’ve been here for ages — you might still be wondering why D.C. loves Ben’s Chili Bowl so much. I turned to a man on the inside to find out.

Below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.

From your perspective, why do D.C. residents love Ben's Chili Bowl so much?

At this point, it's been a mainstay in their lives for so many years. In the beginning, it was new, and it was exciting. It was on this fabulous new corridor called Black Broadway on U Street when we opened up on August 22, 1958. And this place stayed open til three o'clock and four o'clock in the morning, and all the jazz greats were coming in there.

The staff was also a big part of it. A lot of our long-term staff members have been with us 20, 30, 40 years. They got to know the customers on an intimate level, building personal relationships.

All of that goes along with the great chili half smokes, chili cheeseburgers, and chili cheese fries.

For the uninitiated, people unfamiliar with half-smokes, what should they know? And why is it a signature item at Ben's?

It's a succulent half-pork, half-beef smoked sausage. And, of course, we have our signature spicy chili sauce on top of it. It's famous because it's indigenous to Washington, D.C. I'm not sure if he was actually the first one, but they give dad the credit for putting what was a breakfast sausage at the time on a bun, adding the chilies, and making it a sandwich.

For longtime District residents, Ben’s isn’t just a restaurant. It’s a cultural landmark. Why’s that?

We’ve had a rich civil rights history. So you're talking about Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Stokely Carmichael, all these famous people coming in during the late '50s, early '60s, planning the March on Washington.

And then you have the riots of 1960 when Dr. King was assassinated. There was looting and 250 fires in D.C., mostly in the U Street and H Street corridors.

And of course, those famous people early on — jazz greats like Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald – and then evolving to Serena Williams, Denzel Washington, and Allen Iverson, we've always had celebrities come in there.

Can you describe the changes you've seen on U Street over the years?

Those changes went from the glory days of Black Broadway to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. And afterwards, you had desegregation, where a lot of Black people with money left the community and left behind the poorer folks.

Then we had drugs come into the community. First, it was heroin and then crack cocaine. So, now you had what we call the drug wars, when Washington was the number one murder capital of the country. And U Street went from being a great area to being the hood and an open-air drug market.

Then there was the Metro construction, which devastated us for five years. Then you had the rebirth of U Street after the Metro reopened and a very diverse new club scene with Republic Gardens and the Black Cat and all these interesting nightclubs — all the young people repopulating.

And you had the real estate boom. The rowhouses that your grandma lived in for years that were selling for $50,000 to $70,000, all of a sudden, in very few years' time, they became $500,000 to $700,000. So now you have the ensuing gentrification that came along with that.

With all these neighborhood shifts, how has Ben's stayed open as so many other Black-owned businesses shuttered?

Well, I always say number one, we stayed together as a family. But equally important was that we owned our own real estate after renting for like 20 years. At some point, dad was able to buy the building. So us, along with Industrial Bank, our good friends down the street where mom used to work, and Lee's florist — another good friend of our family, which has been open over 80 years — all three of us are there on U Street because we kept together as a family, but also because we were able to buy and own our real estate. We could control our destiny.

Growing up, when did you realize that your parents' restaurant was a big deal?

I graduated from high school in 1980 — [the restaurant was] 22 years in. I knew then that it was a big deal in terms of having lasted over 20 years. And it meant a lot to the city, it meant a lot to our family, it meant a lot to our staff. I knew then that I wanted to make sure it survived. I knew that I was going to be the one to come in and take over Ben’s Chili Bowl from mom and dad.

Then, in 1986, we got a lot of national publicity. The Cosby Show was the number-one-rated show in the country, and [Bill Cosby] was getting some flak from the media, saying that [the show] doesn't really represent Black America. You've got a doctor as a husband with a lawyer as a wife. You live in this beautiful brownstone, and that doesn't really represent real Black people.

Bill Cosby responded by having a national press conference. Location? Ben's Chili Bowl. He addressed that issue and said, ‘Listen, look at us here. Look at everyone in this room. Look at everyone in this corridor. We are Black people. We come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. We are blue collar, white collar. We are trashmen, carpenters, plumbers, and we're also doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Don't judge us. We are all Black people, together.’

So that was a strong message, and it came from Ben’s. It put us in a more national spotlight. From then on, you had news media coming from all over — it didn't matter if it was about the weather, about the Commanders, about politics — they were coming to Ben's Chili Bowl.

What’s your hope for the future of Ben’s?

Ben's has meant so much to our community that we want to expand on that — not just for business reasons, but it's all about scaling and providing more service. We want to provide more jobs and opportunities for D.C. residents and for our staff.

It's all about just being your best, giving your best, doing your best. We want to be one of the best African American businesses — or one of the best small businesses, period. And we want to show our values a little more because Ben's values mean a lot to people — inclusion, building each other up, and being a safe place for everybody.