Living it up at Lincoln's own....

Alan Popovsky & Erika Gutierrez with honest Abe

by contributor Donna Shor

Photo credit: Neshan H. Naltchayan

Where to celebrate Emancipation Day, DC’s special holiday commemorating President Lincoln’s freeing of 3,100 slaves in the District one hundred and fifty years ago? 

Only one answer, at LINCOLN, midtown’s restaurant dedicated to the Great Emancipator himself.  Double down on that, because it was also LINCOLN’s first birthday and a crowd surged in to help blow out the candle for the restaurant. 

 
Special cocktail’s marked the day.  Among them, flutes of champagne-based lavender-infused Mrs. Lincoln quaffs made a hit.  Knob Creek bourbon was the sentimental whiskey of choice, as Lincoln grew up in Knob Creek, Kentucky. 

Chef  Demetrio Zavala circled the room, gathering compliments on the hors d’oeuvres as waiters passed platter after platter of steak crostini, creamy trout tidbits, salmon tartare and sour cream cucumber spirals.

Presiding over it all was a lifelike wax Abraham Lincoln, comfortably seated, surveying the scene under the corn-likker mason jar candelabra, with his own special floor underfoot of acrylic-embedded Lincoln head pennies.

There are seven hundred ninety-nine thousand, and nine-hundred and ninety-seven thousand of the coins, according to Maggie O’Neill, who designed the restaurant.
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“Count ‘em,” says host Alan Popovsky, “no one has yet.”   He says the décor, dedicated to our liberator president, echoes the spirit of the restaurant lounge, of freedom and liberation.

Beauteous Kate Michael, former Miss District of Columbia, felt liberated enough to sit down on Abraham Lincoln’s lap for a quick photo op. 

Kate Michel  Maggie O'Neill and Constance Christakos

“Just look what you’ve done,” said a bystander, “you melted the wax.”