Letter from Kalorama
I lived in Kalorama for fifteen years, and I still turn down its streets when I don’t need to.
It has always done things a little more quietly than Georgetown. Where Georgetown stacks its pumpkins three high on the stoop, Kalorama prefers a single perfect gourd beside a lacquered door, and maybe a flag from a country you’d have to look up. This is a neighborhood of embassies and ambassadors’ residences, of presidents past and present, of houses that don’t announce themselves. On Halloween, it lets its guard down in its own way. Embassies along the edges of the neighborhood open their doors to trick-or-treaters during the day, handing out candy you can’t find at CVS, and by evening the side streets fill with costumed children who have no idea whose house they’re standing in front of.
Mitchell Park Day
This Sunday, October 25th, is Mitchell Park Day. For twenty years I sponsored it, and for fifteen of those years I lived around the corner from it.
If you’ve never found Mitchell Park, that’s rather the point. It’s a small green square tucked into one of the few places in Washington that dates back to the 18th century. An all-volunteer group, the Friends of Mitchell Park, keeps it beautiful, and once a year the whole neighborhood turns out. Lots of great memories and thoughts of those no longer joining us this year.
Come by. It’s the best way I know to understand Kalorama: not through its embassies, but through its neighbors.
The real estate market
Like the rest of the city, Kalorama is waiting on November 3rd.
What fifteen years of living here taught me is that Kalorama buyers are a breed apart. They’re patient, discreet, and they know exactly what they want. When the right house comes along, they move. Buyers here negotiate, and they show up.
This neighborhood has outlasted every administration since Woodrow Wilson lived on S Street. One more election won’t change its address.
At the table
Kalorama has never been a restaurant neighborhood. When I lived here, you walked down the hill for dinner. That’s what makes its few good tables precious.
Kalorama Market has turned the old Opendoor corner into the neighborhood’s living room. It’s run by Daniel Petitta, who cooked under Ryan Ratino at Jônt. (Yes, the same Ratino behind Georgetown’s Ox & Olive. Washington is a small town.) Come for coffee, a sandwich and a bottle of something good to take home. And at the bottom of the hill, Ashok Bajaj’s Annabelle remains the most quietly elegant dining room in this part of the city. Book the garden room for a small dinner. A favorite for many years, La Tomate, Natalina Koropoulos Meggi, is always there to welcome you.
The view from here
Last week I wrote about Georgetown’s pumpkins. This week it’s the neighborhood I called home for fifteen years: a park the neighbors saved, embassies handing out candy, houses that have watched a century of Washington come and go. The city is still holding its breath. In Kalorama, it holds it with impeccable manners.
See you in Mitchell Park on Sunday.
Jim Bell
Sotheby’s International Realty | Washington, DC/ London