When Ben Ali met Virginia Rollins she was working at a bank. Ben wanted to open a restaurant in Washington D.C. They found just the right spot a few blocks from Howard University on U St, the heart of a thriving Black neighborhood with theaters, nightclubs, and dozens of small businesses catering to a Black clientele.
The couple converted an old silent movie house and opened Ben’s Chili Bowl in August 1958. They were married seven weeks later.
“We were able to find the architect, the contractor, the plumber, the electrician, and the cabinet maker right in the immediate vicinity,” Virginia Ali said. In the early days, they had a lot of walk-ins. The eatery has weathered riots, subway construction, crack cocaine, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
When they came to town, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Nat King Cole would eat at Ben’s Chile Bowl. So did Bono, comedian Chris Tucker, and other celebrities like Ted Koppel of ABC’s Nightline. President Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, ate at the Chile Bowl, too.
“We opened up a very colorful place with a plate glass window where people could see all the way into. We wanted it to be a community-based place. We wanted it to make it a home away from home for our guests as they entered,“ Ali said.
“We decided that hotdog was America’s basic food at the time. We had a breakfast sauce that would turn into a delicious sandwich—we called it a “half-smoke”.” A native of Trinidad, Ben had a recipe for spicy chili sauce with mustard, onion, and spices that went on top.
One day Dr. Martin Luther King stopped by and talked with Virginia about his plans for a March on Washington. He told her he had just met with President John Kennedy.
“He told President Kennedy that he was going to bring a lot of people to the city to protest the injustices of African Americans and President Kennedy said ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea. If there’s an incident it would set your movement back. I think you need to be very careful’. Dr. King said ‘there won’t be an incident’ and if you recall there were 250,000 people here for the March on Washington without a single incident,” Ali said.
Ben’s Chile Bowl brought food to feed people who came. Ali said she left the March uplifted and happy because she knew change was coming. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. But three years later, things took a drastic turn.
“I remember when someone rushed into the door and said ‘Dr. King has been shot’… and everybody is in tears and crying and then that sadness turned into frustration and the frustration turned into anger and an uprising began.”
During the rioting following King’s killing, Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who was also a Trinidad native, asked the Alis to keep the restaurant open even though Mayor Walter Washington had imposed a three-day curfew. Ben’s Chili Bowl stayed open, serving police and protesters alike.
“After all that was over many of the businesses didn’t reopen. Middle class African Americans began to move away and then in a short time heroin and crack cocaine moved in and our beautiful neighborhood and community began to go downhill.”
In 1988, after years of delay, construction began on the Metro Green Line. By that time only three businesses had survived. “One was our bank, the Industrial Bank of Washington, Lee’s Flower Shop, and the other was Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Ali said.
“They simply dug up the entire street, 65 feet down. Not one single car is passing in front of the Chile Bowl, a very very difficult time and a challenging time. We had only one employee during that time and my husband found something else to do. But again, we were able to survive.”
When the subway was finished in 1991, new businesses and housing projects quickly transformed the neighborhood. “It’s been a very challenging 62½ years but I can tell you that nothing has been quite as challenging as this pandemic.“
The Chile Bowl was open from 7am until 3am and until 4am on Friday and Saturday nights. But all that came to a sudden halt when the pandemic hit in March 2020.
Word got out the Chili Bowl was struggling and Ali got donations from people all over the country. “We were able to take those funds and give back,” Ali said. The Chili Bowl made lunches for the medical staff at Howard University Hospital, first-responders, teachers, and protestors. “We’ve continued to do that up ‘til now,” she said.
Ali said she didn’t get a PPP loan in the first round but received one in the second round. “That helped us to hold onto our staff,” she said.
They cut back their hours from 11AM to 5PM and started a curb service. They built up e-commerce and started shipping their “delicious half smokes with that homemade spicy chili sauce all over the country. And we’ve been able to do that. So it’s ’s been a struggle but we’re still here after 62½ years”.
“There is help available and I’m sure all small businesses need it, and we’re among them,” Ali said. (see https://tntribune.org/small-businesses-are-making-a-comeback/)
