Customers and recognition
The Boston Globe described Ben's diverse customers as "punk-looking kids and fashionable business people and everyone in between".[11] In 2001, Ben and Virginia's son, Kamal, commented on the changes of what types of people were eating at the establishment: "You hear comments. Even the white customers. They want to think they're the only whites who'd been hip enough to go to the Chili Bowl. Now they look around and there are a lot of other whites and they are not so happy about it."[21]
The most famous regular customer is comedian Bill Cosby, who took his future wife to Ben's when they were dating.[9] He recalls that he first became a frequent visitor while serving in the Navy and stationed in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1958 and frequently visited the U Street jazz clubs.[22] Cosby recalls that during some of his visits with Camille, who was then a student at the University of Maryland, he would "eat as many as six half-smokes at a time."[22] Cosby returned to Ben's in 1985 to hold a press conference in the restaurant to celebrate the success of his television series, The Cosby Show.[11] He continues to stop by Ben's while in town for servings of half-smokes. A sign posted in the restaurant proclaimed that Bill Cosby is the only person who eats for free at Ben's Chili Bowl.[23] On November 3, 2008, a new sign was posted to add "the Obama family".[24] Starting in 2012 a large mural featuring Cosby adorned the building, but was removed in January 2017 amid sexual assault allegations against the comedian.[25]
Many other celebrities, including Chris Tucker and Bono, have visited over the years. When journalist Ted Koppel stopped hosting news program Nightline, he held his 2005 farewell party at the restaurant.[6] Then-President-elect Barack Obama ate at Ben's on January 10, 2009.[4][26]
The Washington Post asserts, "By the late 1990s, no D.C. politician would dream of running for office without dropping into Ben's."[6] Anthony A. Williams appeared at Ben's immediately after his successful mayoral election.[27][28]
In 1998, former DC mayor Marion Barry described having traveled to Ghana and meeting the Mayor of Accra, an alumnus of Howard University, whose greeting was, "Glad to have you in Accra. Is Ben's Chili Bowl still there?"[29] And when French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni visited Washington, D.C., in March 2010, they reportedly each had two of Ben's half smokes during their visit to the restaurant.[30]
Scenes from films including The Pelican Brief[31] and State of Play[32] have been filmed in the restaurant, and it has been in "dozens of TV shows."[33] The short film Breakfast At Ben's was filmed almost entirely in the restaurant.[34] The documentary Traveling While Black, a virtual reality project about racism, makes use of the restaurant as the main filming location in 2019. Additionally, it has been used in novels as the setting for fictional meetings—especially meetings that involve individuals from "different sides of the law"—as it was in George Pelecanos's King Suckerman.[35]
Ben and Virginia Ali were inducted into the D.C. Hall of Fame, and in 1999, the alley adjacent to the restaurant was renamed "Ben Ali Way".[13] On the occasion of Ben Ali's 2009 death, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty released a statement calling the restaurant "one of the greatest treasures in the District of Columbia".[36]
Reviews
In 2004, the James Beard Foundation named Ben's one of the "down-home eateries that have carved out a special place on the American culinary landscape".[37] Michael Stern, a writer specializing in U.S. regional foods, penned a 2008 review raving "The half-smoke is sensational!" and "Ben's serves one of the best sweet potato pies anywhere", and describing the chili as "sensational stuff: thick, peppery, full-flavored and positively addictive".[38] In January 2009, food magazine Bon Appétit named Ben's one of the country's ten "Best Chili Spots", asserting, "No reasonable discussion of great chili joints can take place without mention of this U Street institution."[39] In a 2016 The Washington Post restaurant review, Ben's received one star and the food was described as "awful."[40]
