Washington, D.C. - May 12, 2009

Eat Your Fill

Eatonville Restaurant Opens

You tear through books voraciously. Too bad reading also makes you voracious.

Settle your literal and literary appetites at Eatonville.

The new restaurant from the owner of Busboys and Poets (named for Langston Hughes) is an homage to the Florida hometown of author Zora Neale Hurston, Hughes’s female contemporary in the Harlem Renaissance.

The menu is filled with regional Southern flavors: hush puppies stuffed with rock shrimp and leeks, crab burgers with pickled onions, vegetarian mushroom loaf. The sweeping space brims with chandeliers and Hurston-themed murals created by local graffiti and street artists, including Decoy and Kelly Towles.

Order a julep for the front patio or take in live jazz while sipping sweet tea on the picket-fenced porch inside.

It’s a novel idea.

Eatonville, 2121 14th Street NW, between V and W Streets (202-332-9672 or eatonvillerestaurant.com).