Kangaroo Boxing Club - Pigs and Cows Eaten with Pleasure

Chris and I ate out last night.

You probably don't think this is a big deal. It is. We've been on such a tight budget for so long that to be able to go out to dinner represented a major change in our lives. Even when I was at the political research firm, the salary was such a pittance that our nights out were limited. Now we can go out to dinner without having to rearrange something else in our lives.

We ate at a place called the Kangaroo Boxing Club, located a mere three or four blocks from our house. We had neither visited before nor knew of its existence, because we tend to forget that a world exists if we turn left from our house instead of right. The 11th Street corridor of Columbia Heights has changed drastically in a short time, and KBC was just one of many options from which to choose. I suppose we'll have to try them all.

The night was exceedingly pleasant, so the streets were packed as if it were the weekend. All of the restaurants along the corridor have outdoor seating; we walked by looking at what people were eating to make our decision. In the end, BBQ won.

As soon as we sat down, I liked the place. We sat inside where there was no wait. The BBQ sauces on the table reminded me of Burbank's in Cincinnati, a restaurant I had loved to visit on the way home from Reds baseball games. The pulled pork there at one time had been spectacular, and I always chose the tangy sauce to smother it with. KBC had a similar tangy sauce, and the pulled pork was of the old Burbank's quality. There was a lot of it, too. Chris had the pastrami. We both were so happy with our food that we continued to eat even after we were full, and then we realized that we had left too little on our plates to take home, so we resolved to eat it all and did. It was too good to leave.

It was a simple place, small, with the bar taking up half of it and the tables close together. We chatted with the guys at the table next to us as if we had gone out to dinner together. Old photos of Washington hung on the walls, some with images of KBC's owners photoshopped in. They had some etchings on the light fixtures that were of interest, and a picture of SNL's Pat hung on the bathroom doors to indicate gender. Ha!

I was pretty shocked when our check came and it was under $50. We'd eaten enough food for four people and had some beers and I just kind of figured we were splurging for once. 

I watched two men with interest sitting at one table. They didn't talk to each other - they were too engaged in their phones. One had a beard in the trendy style of gross - rather unkempt and stating "look at me" - and his morose, disinterested demeanor made me wonder what bands he had discovered and discarded during the week. Everything about him screamed hipster, and I feared KBC was a hipster joint. But the guys next to one side of our table weren't hipsters, and the gay couple with the visiting parents on the other side weren't hipsters, and I didn't see any hipsters sitting at the bar, so everything checked out. Whew. We will return.

Oddly enough, I had watched that viral video of the two kangaroos boxing in front of a guy's street early in the day.