Duplex 3.0

Mark Hunker has been going to the 18th & U Duplex Diner since the second day it was in business. Or maybe it was the third day, he can’t quite recall. While 17 years — to the month — can rush by and make memories blurry for anyone, it’s especially true when your ties to a place run deeper than mere longevity, as Hunker’s do to Duplex.

“This place, I grew up here,” the 50-year-old Hunker half-jokes. Certainly, it would be hard to overstate the significance Duplex Diner has had in Hunker’s adult life. So significant, he picked the gay D.C. landmark as the place to get hitched: He married Jeff Shields almost five years ago on the steps off the foyer, leading into the dining room. And so significant, he is essentially raising his nine-year-old daughter Samantha in the place, just a block from their D.C. residence. In fact, when Samantha was just a baby, bartender Jesse Tyler installed a special high chair that hooks right onto the bar — a measure to ensure the continued patronage of her daddy, one of its best customers.

It worked, and then some. Last December, Hunker took his support to the ultimate level, becoming an owner of the diner along with Jeff McCracken. The two longtime friends are also part of a core group of early customers that Eric Hirshfield, the restaurant’s original proprietor, calls “founding members.” And yet, that alone is not what made them the obvious choice to take over this long-established institution. Instead, it’s the experience they’ve developed as owners of two restaurants in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware: The upscale (Hunker calls it “beach elegant”) Eden Restaurant, which they bought 10 years ago, and Jam Bistro, built next door in 2010. According to Hirshfield, the two popular Rehoboth restaurants, like the diner in D.C. before them, “have also kind of become institutions.” All three are draws — places that many people in the community go to regularly, and most everyone else goes to at least occasionally. “So I guess they’re building a mini-empire of restaurant institutions,” Hirshfield laughs.

You’d be forgiven if this mini-empire all-but escaped your notice — even if you count yourself a Duplex regular. Six months into their ownership, Hunker and McCracken have barely trumpeted that news. It’s basically been business as usual at Duplex, with few changes made and few anticipated for the foreseeable future. The two didn’t buy the business from its second owner Kevin Lee to change it or assert their authority, but to ensure it stays the place they’ve long known and loved. Explains McCracken: “Mark and I want it to remain basically what it is, and kind of let it evolve a little bit.”

Of course they wouldn’t dream of changing the two bathrooms — the original shrine to Madonna and the newer tribute to other pop divas, each with wall-plastered press clippings and piped-in music. But they also think the overall space remains fine as it is, four years after Lee remodeled it last. “Kevin did quite a bit of work to the dining room and the bar and I still think it’s fresh,” says McCracken, who renovates houses and does handiwork in his spare time. Hunker and McCracken have also kept the place running the same, retaining most employees, many of whom have been there for 10 years or more — this, in a high-turnover industry where staff often last a year or less at any one place.

“I’ve watched them grow up and get married, buy houses, have children,” Hirshfield says. “There are some employees that have worked there longer than I did.” That is, counting from the time Duplex opened in 1998 to the time he sold it to Lee and his partner Holger in 2011. “Jesse the bartender lapped me about two or three years ago,” Hirshfield says.

Lee was another employee who “only” lasted 13 years, including nearly a decade as a bartender and server. He chalks up Duplex Diner’s impressive retention rate to an environment akin to a “gay Cheers” — it’s friendly, familiar, even familial. “People I hired would say, ‘Oh my god, this is the nicest place I’ve ever worked!'” he says. “The place just feels very comfortable and homey and doesn’t give off an air of pretentiousness.” Adds Hunker: “Everybody here has grown to become a little family.”

One of the few changes Hunker and McCracken made was to promote Kelly Laczko to the newly created position of general manager, after she had spent six years as a bartender and server. Laczko had turned down offers to manage other bars and restaurants, but “this was the right time, and the right place. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it anywhere else.” Both Hirshfield and Lee say Hunker and McCracken made the right choice in promoting Laczko to handle the venue’s day-to-day operations. “She knows what she’s doing, she’s on point, honest and hard-working,” Lee says.

“I was really happy to hear that she took over as general manager,” Hirshfield adds. “The diner is definitely in good hands.” Hunker and McCracken also retained Lee’s original hire of Mark Mulvey as chef. The Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef had worked at a restaurant in the foodie destination of Charleston, South Carolina. “I think Mark is anxious to spread his wings a little bit, and we’re giving him more license to do that,” McCracken says.

Last month Duplex unveiled Mulvey’s slight revamp of the menu, developed after months of consultation with Laczko and the owners. The new menu still adheres to a notion of Duplex as the place to go for gay Washingtonians and others looking for slightly upgraded diner-fare — one of the better burgers in town, plus above-par Reuben and chicken sandwiches, and a homemade-style meatloaf entrée served with green beans and creamy mashed potatoes. It also offers slightly healthier fare, notably through entrée-sized salads such as broccolini with grilled chicken, an option suited to a health-conscious clientele.

All of those items remain essentially unchanged, though the menu does see the return of a couple of older sides. For example, the burgers — three twists on the Angus beef standard, plus a vegetarian option made with black beans — and other sandwiches are now served with hand cut fries (unless you’d prefer tater tots or onion rings). These are the smaller, better variety Duplex once served, before, one surmises, a size-queen mentality mucked up a good thing. Speaking of big, the large, plump pickles once served in a bucket — in lieu of a breadbasket — have also returned to the menu, although only “upon request.”

A few of the new Mulvey-designed standouts first saw life as specials over the past several months: a Watermelon and Basil Salad, which is an unusually good twist on a Caprese salad but with feta replacing mozzarella to make up for the missing tomato, which even watermelon-averse eaters won’t hate; an entrée of crispy rockfish with lemon-butter sauce served with toasted farro risotto and kale; and Wild Mushroom Ragout, an incredibly rich and flavorful vegetarian entrée, consisting of shitake and Hen of the Woods mushrooms and a creamy polenta with tomato butter sauce. The new menu was partially influenced by the philosophy that guides the pair’s Rehoboth restaurants: “We do nothing off the truck,” says McCracken. “It’s all made in-house, or using fresh produce, that we prepare and offer all the time.”

A new foldout cocktail menu was also recently unveiled, listing the finer wines and higher-quality beers, both bottled and on tap. Of course, Duplex’s signature drink, the Lemon Squeeze, remains, as do the many muddled-fruit-with-vodka variations it’s inspired.

For her part, Laczko, who has her own events planning business, intends to throw more and better organized events and parties in the space — such as an Edge of Seventeen-themed anniversary party Friday, July 17, with DJ Khelan. She’s also working to establish a regular Ladies’ Night — the type geared for lesbians and the ladies who love them — as well as make Duplex a bit more active in the LGBT community as a whole, sponsoring more gay amateur sports teams, and catering or hosting receptions for gay-supportive charities.

But the themed nights remain essentially unchanged. In terms of specials, these include: Monday night’s half-price-off most menu items beginning with the letter “M,” from mac ‘n’ cheese to meatloaf to margaritas to Montepulciano; Tuesday’s half-price burgers and $4 domestic beers; and Wine-O Wednesday’s half-price-off all wines. Many nights also bring in specific crowds — for example, Monday nights typically draw a slightly older, more established gay set, while Saturdays tend to attract more straight couples.

Of course one night continues to reign supreme. “Thursdays are a mix, all different ages,” Laczko says, “but it’s generally a younger crowd, an influx of new blood coming in.” Thursday is popular with diners, but even more so with drinkers, who slowly take over the entire space after 10 p.m., turning it into a stand-and-model bar. Hirshfield still marvels at how the night developed into Duplex’s busiest. “Thursday nights became really busy on their own,” he says. “That wasn’t a promotion, that wasn’t anything we kick-started.”

Hirshfield cites the unplanned popularity of Thursday night as one example of why he thinks Duplex took root as an institution. “I think it’s because I wasn’t trying to make it anything specific,” he says. “It was just this simple concept of a diner-style restaurant and neighborhood bar with a friendly staff, good food and strong drinks. There was no gimmick, there was no set formula that I followed.”

Hirshfield conceived of the restaurant after walking by the “vacant, abandoned and forlorn” storefront. He sensed an opportunity to provide something he found lacking in his ethnic cuisine-rich Adams Morgan neighborhood — a basic, American-style diner. Naturally, he had no idea it would remain vital nearly two decades later. Equally, it’s gratifying to see it thriving without him. He compares the feeling to that of a proud papa “and all that corny stuff.”

Ultimately, however, Hirshfield, who is now a property developer for both commercial and residential projects, is glad to be out of the restaurant business. The only thing he misses are the many built-in social opportunities that owning Duplex provided. Lee, who has returned to full-time work with the small gardening business he and his partner Holger own, feels the same way. Owning the diner was a bit too taxing on their time.

Yet both are pleased with what’s shaping up as Diner 3.0 under Hunker and McCracken. “They’ve been true to their word as far as keeping a lot of the good things about the diner, they have kept the core the same,” Lee says. Adds Hirshfield: “They haven’t changed the concept. They’ve kept the spirit of it.”

For his part, Hunker is intrigued by prospects for Duplex’s surrounding neighborhood. “We want to be part of what I think is going to be the renaissance of the bottom part of Adams Morgan and the top of Dupont Circle,” he says, citing a forthcoming new restaurant across 18th Street as well as friendly relations with Duplex’s neighbors. “You can’t ask for more than just being part of the neighborhood,” he says. And this longtime neighborhood resident is still a bit in awe of the fact that he’s also now a neighbor in a different capacity.

“I still pinch myself that it actually happened,” he says. “I can’t believe that I own the diner!”

The 18th and U Duplex Diner is at 2004 18th St. NW. Call 202-265-9599 or visit duplexdiner.com.