City Desk

Tex-Mex eatery chain Chipotle is busily colonizing the District, but it’s run into immigration woes in Woodley Park, where a new Chipotle at Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street NW has applied for a liquor license. At a June 25 Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 3C meeting, fretting residents worried that patrons might “take out” beers with their quesadillas and despoil the neighborhood. One concerned resident suggested forcing Chipotle to use “glassware”—prompting an hour of typically ANC-like quibbling over the term’s definition. The group settled on “steins,” but residents theorized that these might be impractical if Chipotle lacked a dishwasher. At last, one resident came up with the notion of “really bright glasses.” The “Day-Glo colors,” as this resident put it, would allow the easy fingering of sidewalk scofflaws in what ANC 3C Commissioner Kurt Vorndran dubs “a belt-and-suspenders type of neighborhood.” No final decision on Chipotle or the “colorful” glassware has yet been reached. —Jason M. Zalinger