THE
WASHINGTON
POST
.
FRIDAY,MAY
27, 2022
EZ
10
Casual Dining
BY TIM CARMAN
It’s Monday afternoon, and I’m seated at the end of
the bar at Post Pub, the downtown dive left for dead
in the first months of the pandemic. As best as I can
tell, I’m the only person at the bar knocking back a
glass of water with lunch. The rest of the crew are day
drinkers, the kind that fueled this place for decades,
back in the era when a couple of martinis at noon
marked you as a red-blooded American, not some
slacker looking to nap away the afternoon in a
comfortable chair.
Elton John and Dua Lipa’s “Cold Heart,” with its
“Rocket Man” riff, plays on the sound system, which
is almost too on the nose for a historic pub that has
been dragged into the modern age, one with a
distinctly electronic pulse. The Post Pub’s new owner,
Jeremy Wladis, is a New Yorker who wanted to give
the place a second life. He wasn’t a regular at the pub.
You wouldn’t have found him perched on a bar stoolon a random Saturday, watching the game with a
cold pint in hand. He’s too busy. He has pizzerias,
taverns and neighborhood restaurants to run, in
three cities, including Washington and Charlotte.
But Wladis has a history of saving restaurants that
have hit their golden years, unsure whether they’re
still viable to a younger generation. He entered the
picture too late to save the Post Pub before its
previous owner, Bob Beaulieu, turned in his keys to
the landlord. But as soon as he signed a lease for the L
Street NW space, Wladis reached out to Beaulieu,
hoping to resurrect the pub’s good name. Wladis
went through an intermediary, the Budweiser rep for
the Post Pub, which is just so perfect.
Wladis bought the company from Beaulieu and
brought the former owner on as a consultant, even if
the New Yorker had his own ideas on how to run the
pub. The first thing Wladis did was rip up the
wall-to-wall carpeting, probably still damp from all
the spilled beer. He decluttered the walls and paintedOld and new mingle
at resurrected Post Pub
It’s an uneasy b alance at times, but the f eeling of community remains strong
PHOTOS BY DEB LINDSEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
ABOVE: The Tom Hamburger i s a classic burger with lettuce, tomato, caramelized onions, pickles and Post Pub sauce with a side of onion rings. It’s named after Tom
Hamburger, the investigative journalist. BELOW: The Post Pub owner Jeremy Wladis, a New Yorker, wanted to give the place a second life. Lined up around the restaurant
are cans from his father-in-law’s collection. Wladis brought previous owner Bob Beaulieu on as a consultant at the L Street NW space.