Finallysome newson what’s replacing CommonWealth: it’s going to be Acre 121, a place specializing in barbeque and Lowcountry home cooking, as in coastal South Carolina. The chef is Michael Soper, who also runs neighborhoody home cooking places in Alexandria like King Street Blues (which looks corny, based on the website) and Union Street Public House. As Post food critic Tim Carman puts it, “None of these places attract the pampered foodie types, of course, but they have all been around for years, consistently catering to a neighborhood clientele.”You get the feeling that Carman is trying to hold his nose during the article, but still be nice about it. It’s owned by Terry Cullen, who also runs Lou’s City Bar.
The menu items mentioned include “pulled pork sliders (on brioche buns with bleu cheese cole slaw), a “Carpetbag Po’ Boy” (with sliced steak, fried oysters and remoulade sauce), a grilled shrimp BLT (with a fried green tomato, glazed pork belly and blue cheese slaw), and a “Lowcountry Fish and Chips” (beer-battered grouper with sweet potato fries).” No word on Scotch eggs but considering the theme, I’m guessing that’s a no.
They had a soft opening last night, but according Twitterers only mentioned the band.
As for the decor, they’re putting in wood floors, which hopefully will make it less noisy than CommonWealth was, taking out the weird little private dining room, and adding a small stage for music.
Sounds interesting, and I like Southern food. As for the name, Soper isn’t too sure what it means. He says it’s some reference to an old designation for Columbia Heights, but that’s not familiar to me. It’s not any of the lot numbers in the area and the old timey subdivisions had people’s names (this one was Sheaman’s Subdivision — see page 10 of the first volume of this old surveyor’s book.)
Anyway, I’ll definitely check it out. I hope they have Southern brunch, that would be pretty solid.
