Eatery Fights Neighborhood Isolation

Diverse Mt. Pleasant community brings need to engage

Flanked on one side by an alley and by a crumbling antiques store façade on another, Dos Gringos Café has become a stable mainstay in a changing and sometimes troubled neighborhood. After nearly 9 years of serving the Mt. Pleasant community of Washington, D.C., however, it faces even more challenges than in the past.

Dos Gringos serves a diverse menu to an even more varied clientele. Doctors, laborers, young non-profit workers and local shop owners all find a meal in the café's corner perch. But even as it approaches a decade in age, its beginning remains the same.

"I was living in the neighborhood and I wanted a bagel with cream cheese and tomato," said Alex Kramer, co-founder and sole current owner of Dos Gringos. "It was the most expensive bagel with cream cheese and tomato I've ever had."

For Kramer, the decision to open a restaurant with her former partner also meant examining what its role would be in a community that has undergone tremendous shits in demographics and fortune over the past fifty years.

Neighborhood in Flux

The roots of these changes extend into the 1960s, with an influx in Latino immigration. The white flight that followed the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr riots of 1968 turned the formerly white neighborhood predominantly black and Latino until the early 1990s.

The 1991 Mt. Pleasant riot - the worst in the District since 1968 - served as a turning point for the community, forcing the Washington, D.C. city government reach out to the Latino community. This included renovations to Mt. Pleasant Street, the main street of the business corridor and future home of Dos Gringos.

"In 1999 the neighborhood was almost solely Latino owned," said Kramer in describing a vibrant strip that consisted largely of bodegas, salons, grocers and laundromats.

According to the 2000 Census, conducted just as Dos Gringos was opening its doors, the neighborhood had become 30 percent Hispanic, 46 percent African American, and 23 percent white.

Majority white upper-income families had begun to buy houses in the neighborhood and drive up prices at the same time, said Kramer. She and her partner - both white - feared that the restaurant was to be a face of gentrification, something they had sought to avoid.

"We were originally going to call the place Cup O'Joe's but we realized we would be excluding a whole population," said Kramer. She and her partner then decided to work with the Latino Economic Development Council of Washington, D.C., seeking suggestions.

Finding a Place and Name

It was the Development Council board that suggested "gringo," a slang word commonly used to refer to anglophones and especially to Americans in Latin America. "They said, tongue in cheek, 'Why don't you call it gringos?' We said, 'Really? Ok.'" Dos Gringos (Two Gringos) was born.

"I came to Mt. Pleasant because I wanted to be part of Mt. Pleasant," Kramer added, "so the full name is Dos Gringos: A Mount Pleasant Café."

Beyond the name, Kramer described other tactics to attract a Latino clientele. "When we were opening I was reading about a Korean businessman... he said, 'if I put everything in Korean only Koreans will come. If i put it in English the Koreans will know,'" said Kramer, "I thought that was brilliant."

The first menu at the counter is written entirely in Spanish, allowing Spanish speaking customers to point to items if the worker does not understand. Conversely, English speaking customers can look over their shoulder for their own menu.

"I would say we worked hard to bring in the Latino community," said Kramer. Dos Gringos holds weekly language exchange nights, meetups and hosts vibrant community bulletin boards. Directing community outreach, especially around health issues, is something Kramer takes pride in.

"I love coming here," said Dos Gringos patron Alice Krupict. Despite having moved to the suburbs, Krupict travels to Mt. Pleasant just for coffee and community atmosphere at Dos Gringos.

Neighborhood resident Jesse Prentice-Dunn echoed this, saying, "they have a good range of food... it feels like it's home in Mt. Pleasant."

"I want it to be about getting a good hearty, wholesome meal," said Kramer about Dos Gringos' eclectic mix of Latino and vegetarian influences. Still, when it comes to a restaurant, there is always a critic.

"I just got advised by a customer, a Latino woman," said Kramer, "that our food is not Latino. 'Why don't you have a plato típico,' she asked? I said, 'because Don Juan's has a typical plate, Marleny's has a typical plate.'"

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