Salon, bookstore, restaurant, performance space, lounge, bar, political activist hangout: Busboys and Poets is all these things. The name pays tribute to poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1920s, writing poems on the side. Busboys has been popular right from the start, and a diverse crowd collects here day and night to peck on their laptops, plan the revolution, and listen to spoken-word performances, pausing only to take a sip of a preferred beverage, whether a Corona or champagne. Busboys' success has led owner Andy Shallal to open a second location in Arlington, Virginia (4251 Campbell Ave.; tel. 703/379-9756); by the time you read this, there's a good chance that Shallal will have opened a third Busboys at 5th and K sts. NW and a restaurant called Eatonville, named after the Florida town where Zora Neale Huston grew up -- Eatonville will be located across the street from the original Busboys, and serve African-influenced low-country cuisine.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Washington, D.C. 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Find Hotel Deals on Yahoo Travel»