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Review content:
Bar Review Rock Solid By Fritz Hahn Washington Post Weekend Section Friday, November 11, 2005 Whether you blame the smoking ban or changing demographics, Montgomery County has lost some of its oldest neighborhood watering holes in recent years. The Anchor Inn closed after more than 50 years in Wheaton. Dietle's Tavern, which received the county's second liquor license after the end of Prohibition, shut its doors for good. But there is some good news: The Quarry House Tavern (8401 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring; 301-587-9406), which opened in Silver Spring in the mid-1930s, isn't going anywhere. Jim Brown has been the steward of this low-ceilinged, wood-paneled basement bar since 1975, watching over a collection of antique beer posters, German beer steins and a large boar's head, which usually has a rose in its mouth. A steady flow of regular customers sip Leinenkugel and Warsteiner and munch on house specialties such as the Grotto Grill, a hamburger that arrives with flattened hunks of fresh ground chuck dangling over the edge of the roll, topped with a gooey, greasy pile of melted Swiss cheese and mushrooms, and Utz chips straight from the tin. Brown was a regular of the Quarry House for years before he purchased it. "I just love the place," he says. "The very idea of the local tavern is something I fell in love with." He has kept it going through good times and bad, lean years and the booming redevelopment. Now, he says, it's time to move on. "I've been here for almost 30 years. There's a lot more competition today. We're the only tavern left." Brown didn't just want to abandon the Quarry House, though. He wanted to find someone to keep it going -- and eventually mentioned his interest to Jackie Greenbaum and Patrick Higgins, who run Jackie's, a neighborhood restaurant a few blocks away. "Jim came to us and asked if we were interested [in taking it over]," Higgins says. "[Quarry House] is such an amazingly unique little watering hole. . . . Jackie and I jumped at the chance to preserve it and put our own little twist on it." That twist, he says, will be mild and gradual. "People are calling us, like, 'Please, please, please, don't change the Quarry House.' It is what it is, and we don't want to change it that much. The boar head's not going anywhere." He pauses. "Oh, the Keno's going." Instead, Higgins and Greenbaum plan to change the menu, adding such items as pork riblets and mini-burgers. They're applying for a full liquor license -- the Quarry House sells only beer and wine -- and hope to offer a menu of classic martinis in honor of the bar's 1937 birth year. Microbrews such as Hook & Ladder and Wild Goose Porter should stay on draft, joined by an expanded wine list and a wider selection of imported beers. A DJ booth will eventually find its way into the back dining room, and Higgins says they may even have acoustic jazz. (Sadly, he's also talking about removing the wonderful jukebox, stocked with John Lee Hooker, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles and Johnny Cash, and replacing it with a digital jukebox. Someone needs to start a petition drive.) Higgins and Greenbaum are taking over the Quarry House on Dec. 1, and they intend to close for a "week or so" to clean and address such mundane maintenance issues as a new sump pump. Then we'll get our first look at the new, improved Quarry House. With any luck, it'll be around for 70 more years.
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