Carla Hall and Andy Shallal Team Up for a Modern-Southern Restaurant: Mule Bone

Carla Hall and Andy Shallal Team Up for a Modern-Southern Restaurant: Mule Bone

Anna Spiegel
Washingtonian

Eatonville on 14th Street is set for a complete makeover that goes well beyond fresh paint. Owner Andy Shallal—who’s also behind Busboys and Poets—has teamed up with celebrity chef Carla Hall of The Chew for a new concept: Mule Bone, named after the play by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

“We’re starting a new chapter,” says Shallal. “It’s going to be modern-southern cooking, and keep up with the trends that are happening that pertain to southern food.”

Eatonville will close for business on January 17th after five years in business, and undergo renovations that will freshen the space, expand the bar area, and make the dining area more intimate (roughly 155 seats versus the 250 existing spaces). Hall will spearhead the menu and search for a full-time executive chef, who’ll run the restaurant on a day-to-day basis. The team is also on the hunt for a new mixologist.

Shallal projects that Mule Bone will reopen in February. The new space will also hold a small retail component from Desiree Venn Frederic of Nomad Yard Collectiv.

Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

PHOTO 2024 02 01 07 10 14

For Langston Hughes on His 123 Birthday

Speech given on February 1, 2024 in Havana, Cuba In 1927 Langston Hughes walked into a Cuba amid an emerging community of artists, intellectuals, and radicals.  He saw a “sunrise in a new land [– a day – in his words]sic – full of brownskin surprises, and hitherto unknown contacts in a world of color.”  … Continued

PALESTINE WEEK 1920 x 1080 px 2

Palestine Week 2024

January 18, 2024 – January 25, 2024 In keeping with our ongoing mission of uplifting racial and cultural connections, Busboys and Poets is hosting Palestine Week (January 18 through January 25, 2024). This week-long series of events will offer a diverse range of programming featuring Palestinian food, music, dance, poetry, discussions, and other enriching events. … Continued

patrick pride

Busboys and Poets Book Review: Anger is a Gift

Mark Oshiro’s contemporary YA fiction is an incredibly moving story about community, about love, and about taking a stand against prejudice and violence, even when it seems completely hopeless, and it is especially difficult to read. Especially for someone like me, caught up in my own privilege and ignorant of the struggles faced by people … Continued

Cuba Week Deck

Busboys and Poets Cuba Week 2022

October 15, 2022 – October 22, 2022 Join us at Busboys and Poets for Cuba Week 2022 as we celebrate the food, art, and culture of Cuba! Come and experience the authentic taste of Cuba at Busboys and Poets! We’ve partnered with the Embassy of Cuba’s head chef to bring you four very special dishes … Continued

On Censorship by Salman Rushdie

On Censorship by Salman Rushdie

No writer ever really wants to talk about censorship. Writers want to talk about creation, and censorship is anti-creation, negative energy, uncreation, the bringing into being of non-being, or, to use Tom Stoppard’s description of death, “the absence of presence.” Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it.

A Girls Guide to Joining the Resistance Book Review

A Girls Guide to Joining the Resistance Book Review

Emma Gray’s tiny book of feminist resistance promises to be a guide to doing more and doing good in a world that seems to have turned against women all together. The book is extremely readable and well-put together, starring personal anecdotes, interviews with amazing activists, and step-by-step guides made to help us as readers do … Continued