Present Company Public House opens tonight in Mount Vernon Triangle, replacing the former Sixth Engine space inside a historic firehouse with a renovated place for a former fine-dining chef to riff on American bar food.
The kitchen at the new bar, which comes from the owners of the Pub and the People in Bloomingdale, will serve Nashville hot chicken wings made with Maine maple sugar and whiskey. Instead of nachos with a tortilla chip base, Present Company has deep-fried, breaded eggplant chips topped with melted buffalo mozzarella, avocado, pico de gallo, jalapeno pesto, and shaved jalapeno and cilantro. Pastrami for a Reuben sandwich is smoked in-house. Entrees include cacio e pepe made with fresh gnocchi and a vegan yellow curry bowl with kimchi fried rice.
Chef Lincoln Fuge, a Nashville native who was recently executive chef at Ashok Bajaj’s (now-closed) upscale 701 Restaurant, is leading the kitchen. Fuge also used to work at Beso, the Hollywood restaurant that celebrity chef Todd English and actress Eva Longoria owned until 2017.
With the menu at Present Company, Fuge is hoping to make interesting food without all the pretense of fine-dining. A release for the restaurant promises no “chef-y drizzles,” tweezers, or small plates.
“I didn’t want any of the food here to be the same thing you can get at all the bars around town,” Fuge says.
Present Company (438 Massachusetts Avenue, NW) has 60 seats on the first floor between the bar and the dining room. Roughly 50 more will follow on the second floor, where the team added a bar. There will be room for about 50 on the patio. The latter two spaces aren’t open just yet. The bar will have 12 rotating beers on tap. Beer and shot combos are as cheap as $6.
The restaurant comes from co-owners Matt Murphy, Brittany Ryan, Nick Bernel, and Jeremy Gifford.
Previously, they were slinging drinks part-time at Rhino Bar in Georgetown before it closed in 2015, a few months before the group opened the Pub & The People.
“We’re working at the bar all together and we sort of realized we could run it and had the skills to put it together,” says Murphy, who previously worked in public interest law.
The firehouse, built in 1855 as Engine Company No. 6, was the oldest operating fire station in D.C. until it was decommissioned in 1974, and you’ll find nods to that history all over, including in the name of the restaurant.
When workers stripped the drywall off during the renovation to reveal exposed brick and ceiling beams, they discovered a steel kick plate in the back of the building where the horses’ stables once were. That plate prevented the horses from kicking through the brick walls, says co-owner Bernel, a former architect.
The owners mounted the steel plate behind the draft tower to serve as a backsplash.
“Instead of throwing it away, we decided to make it a focal point,” Murphy says. “It’s just too cool.”
Vintage wooden fire ladders with lights have found new life as separators. And Bernel’s firefighter friend donated several decommissioned grayish firehoses that the owners display on the wall.
Lunch and weekend brunch service are expected in the fall, Fuge says. While the lunch menu will essentially mirror the dinner menu, highlights from the brunch include a gluten-free masa pancake with smoked maple syrup, and a breakfast burrito stuffed with eggs, spinach, Vermont aged cheddar, cherry heirloom tomato pico de gallo, smashed avocado, and hash browns.
“It’s a gut buster,” Fuge says of the burrito.
Present Company Public House opens at 4 p.m. — just in time for happy hour.
Present Company dinner menu by Anonymous sIxp2JcBp on Scribd
Present Company cocktails by Anonymous sIxp2JcBp on Scribd
Present Company beer by Anonymous sIxp2JcBp on Scribd