Valanos, the owner, closed his doors just before Christmas, when a surge in coronavirus cases caused a brief shutdown of indoor dining. He expected to reopen just before President Biden’s inauguration, hoping to draw some small groups looking to celebrate.
The Monocle is inside that perimeter and has been closed ever since, the only business shuttered by the fallout of the pro-Trump riots.
“It’s a little too much to ask our guests to climb a barbwire fence and confront the National Guard,” Valanos said.
Congressional security officials said Friday that the outer fencing could start coming down this weekend, leaving a security perimeter around the Capitol itself but not the office buildings across Constitution and Independence avenues.
Opening those critical thoroughfares would give the Monocle a chance.
Informed Friday evening about the news, Valanos expressed the sort of trust-but-verify optimism that his guests in the 1980s would have had about the fall of the Soviet empire. “Until I see it,” he said of the fence being gone, “until I see it.”
If all goes well, one of Capitol Hill’s most storied restaurants might reopen by mid-April, when Congress returns from its spring break.
Rep. Rodney Davis (Ill.), the ranking Republican on the House Administration Committee, said he agreed with the big security presence through the inauguration, but now feels like security decisions are being made on an ad hoc, inconsistent basis.
The House shuttered itself on March 4, after QAnon conspiracy activists talked about another insurrection to reinstall former president Donald Trump. The Senate remained in session, even calling Vice President Harris to break a tie vote that day.
“I think it’s politics,” Davis said of the security posture.
One group formed, Don’t Fence the Capitol, to protest the blight on a neighborhood that prides itself on being part of history. “A democracy doesn’t block off public access to the seat of government,” Barbara Johnson told The Washington Post at the March 13 protest near the Supreme Court.
Valanos can’t fathom closing his legendary restaurant. “It’s a part of the family. I mean it’s like a living, breathing son or daughter to me. It’s a very important part of my life,” Valanos said.
It’s also important to the Capitol culture, particularly on the Senate side, where the building sits a few hundred yards from the Hart, Dirksen and Russell office buildings. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose portrait from 1994 is adorned on the far corner wall, lives 1½ blocks away. The portrait of his wife, former cabinet secretary Elaine Chao, hangs among a large group of other lawmakers on the other wall.
In the late 1970s the Navy’s Senate liaison made himself a regular there, befriending his future colleagues. When John McCain moved to Arizona to launch his first Congressional campaign, Valanos’s father wrote $100 check, a rare political donation.
McCain never cashed it and instead tacked the check on an office wall.
As a college student at the University of Maryland, Valanos started dropping by his parents’ restaurant and quickly realized the fun when he answered the phone one afternoon.
“It was Ted Kennedy’s secretary saying that his two nephews are coming by with some girlfriends,” Valanos recalled.
A short time later, John F. Kennedy Jr., the glamorous son of the late president, dropped in to the restaurant where his father was briefly a regular in 1960 while still in the Senate.
The federal government used an eminent domain claim to purchase the land from the Valanos family years ago, and leased it back to the restaurant.
So there is a painful irony: The renter is writing monthly checks to the very same landlord who has shut down the business with its security presence.
Valanos, 64, took over from his parents in the 1990s and has seen some difficult days.
On Sept. 11, 2001, as three senators held breakfast events there, Valanos watched the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon on TV, rushing to the restaurant from his Spring Valley home to join his wife there.
He discovered that the Capitol Police headquarters, right next to the restaurant, had been turned into a security site for most senators, drawing a huge throng of reporters outside.
With cell service disrupted nationwide, senators and reporters crowded into the restaurant to use the landline phones and to grab a snack.
“We had sent everyone home, I mean the cooks and everything. There was one bartender here. I think I made some cheese and fruit or something just to hold some people over,” Valanos said.
But they were back in business immediately and have continued to thrive — until the coronavirus pandemic hit a year ago.
With very little outdoor space, the restaurant closed outright for most of last spring and summer, reopening when Congress returned from its summer break. Still, the onetime staff of 30 shrunk because the large events that provide almost a third of revenue remained forbidden.
As Inauguration Day approached, Valanos began to navigate how to host some revelers in rotating groups and looked forward to a good size crowd for Valentine’s Day weekend, hopeful for a big spring as vaccines spread.
Then came the Jan. 6 riots. A sign still hangs on a nearby parking meter, warning drivers that the road is closed for a few days in early January.
His first day he got back to Capitol Hill, troops for the National Guard would not let him through the security gate.
“This is my credit card, this is my ID,” he said, pointing across the parking lot. “That is my restaurant!”
No one ever would have thought that great location could turn into such a terrible spot.
“But it will be a fabulous location again,” Valanos promised, “after things open up.”
