Jonathan O’Connell reports that the Busboys and Poets empire is expanding. Owner Andy Shallal has signed a lease to open the fifth Busboys in Takoma. The 6,500-square-foot restaurant/bookstore/cafe will be in a mixed-use building at the corner of Carroll and Maple streets NW that’s currently under construction. Shallal expects it to open in the spring of 2014.

And he’s not stopping there; the sixth location could follow shortly thereafter. Shallal says he’s negotiating a lease on a space in Brookland.

But there’s still no word on the neighborhood that’s clamoring hardest for new eating options: Anacostia. “I am really trying to make this work, ” Shallal told me last month of a possible Busboys in Anacostia. But he tells O’Connell that the vacant Uniontown Bar and Grill space is too small and his other Ward 8 outreach hasn’t yielded results.

For now, Busboys aficionados will have to content themselves with five, or possibly six, locations.