Customers love this Georgetown bagel shop. Some neighbors want it closed. (2024)

“Everybody loves the restaurant, right? And that’s probably one of the detriments,” said Paul Maysak, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, at a contentious hearing Wednesday before the Board of Zoning Adjustment hearing that will help determine Call Your Mother’s fate. “They basically outsource the dining room to the sidewalk for the large part. So, I’d love to see it work. I wouldn’t want it across the street from me.”

Call Your Mother, an instant hit at area farmers markets, where their 400 bagels usually sold out in an hour, opened its first store in Park View in 2018. Since then, it has rapidly expanded across the region to 10 stores, half of which opened in the last four years, said Andrew Dana, the co-owner of the restaurant. Locals consider it a staple. Tourists seek out the shop for the food and snap Instagram-worthy photos with the bright pink backdrop. Even President Biden visited days after his inauguration. (Jeff Zients, who joined the Biden administration to coordinate the coronavirus response, is a former partner in the business.)

But the Georgetown location at 35th and O Streets NW, which opened in 2020, has been a source of consternation. Sixteen residents upset about its operation, among them a law professor, tax lawyer and a dentist, took their complaints to court. More recently, the takeout shop with limited indoor seating deputized an employee to be on stoop patrol, in charge of asking customers to move.

The hearing Wednesday was meant to address the latest dispute in the lengthy legal and zoning board battle. To continue to sell sandwiches in the 1,188-square-foot rowhouse where it sits, the shop needs the zoning board to approve its application.

“Having to shoo people off our stoop every single time going in and out was more than annoying,” said Caroline Emad, who, along with her husband, owns the house next to Call Your Mother. While the Emads do not live in the house full-time, they said they worry about their tenants. “It’s fantastic to have them next to us. It’s a thriving business. But I think they overgrew and the place is too small for them.”

The shop has the support of some residents and an important ally: the city. Crystal Myers of the D.C. Office of Planning said during the hearing that the office is recommending the zoning board approve Call Your Mother’s application for an exception, citing the building’s long history of operating as a store. If the board disagrees, Dana said, the store could close, risking the jobs of the 20 to 25 people employed at the Georgetown location.

After about seven hours of discussion, Frederick L. Hill, the chairperson of the Board of Zoning Adjustment, suggested they reconvene for another hearing on Sept. 25. It was not clear when the zoning board would reach its decision.

“Mr. Dana, I think you had more hair when you started,” Hill joked during his presentation.

“Maybe just a touch,” said Dana, who is also the co-owner of the District’s Timber Pizza along with his wife, Daniela Moreira. “And I have glasses now. It’s been a tough four years, man.”

The throngs of satisfied customers have done little to change some residents’ minds. Melinda Roth, who lives nearby and was among the 16 people who took an earlier dispute over Call Your Mother to court, wrote in a PowerPoint presentation to the zoning board that the matter was “Not a Popularity Contest” and asked if it would be possible for a less “objectionable” tenant to move in to the corner location, floating the possibility of “some quiet sleepy business that isn’t super successful.”

“We all want them to continue to be successful, but as you’ll hear, we want them to be successful in the right place,” Roth said. “And not on a block in the middle of a residential neighborhood that is ill-equipped to handle the consequences of their great success.”

The building that Call Your Mother is renting has a history of business use dating back to pre-Civil War times, according to Topher Mathews, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the area. It began as a grocery store, which was replaced by a shop selling antiques and later, flowers. Even as zoning laws changed, the rotating shops were able to apply for exceptions and keep their doors open.

The antique shop, for example, was approved in the 1970s, changing the allowed use of the property from the previous grocery store to retail sales, Mathews wrote. But Call Your Mother doesn’t do classic retail sales; it’s a bagel shop. So before it opened in 2020, it successfully applied to the zoning board for an exception. And then, things went sideways.

A group of 16 neighbors disagreed with the zoning board’s decision to allow Call Your Mother to operate and took their complaints all the way to the D.C. Court of Appeals, winning a partial victory in August 2022 when the court said the zoning board needed to authorize additional levels of approval for the store to sell prepared food. Dana said that again put him before the zoning board so he could keep selling bagel sandwiches.

At least one competitor, too, says Call Your Mother isn’t playing by the rules. Sean Flynn, a co-owner of Coffee Republic, just 80 feet from the bagel shop, wrote to the zoning board that since the deli’s opening, his shop has seen a decline in customers and a significant revenue loss. At the same time, Flynn wrote, Call Your Mother customers have used Coffee Republic’s tables and restrooms without buying anything.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare,” Flynn said at the meeting. “We just want to continually be able to impact the community in a positive way and serve the community. But in order to do that, I think we have to have a fair shot at survival.”

Roth’s PowerPoint depicted a chaotic scene. She included photos of customers sitting on the sidewalk and stoops while eating bagels, overflowing public trash and recycling bins, litter, and photos of what she described as “humongous rats.” (An exterminator testified on Wednesday that Call Your Mother has not worsened the rat problem.)

“One man even uses a garbage can as a table to eat his bagels,” Roth, a George Washington University law professor, wrote on a slide above a photo of a customer in a backward baseball cap next to food on top of a trash can. She complained of customers who drove to the store and took “rare residential parking spaces,” and of noisy delivery trucks filling already clogged roadways.

“The owners of these houses have been unable to get people to move. People get very belligerent. They want to eat their bagels. They want to eat their sandwiches. That’s part of the experience,” Roth said to the board.

Michael Savage, a tax lawyer and a former resident who was also among the 16 involved in the court case, long opposed Call Your Mother opening at this location because he had seen the crowds at the Georgia Avenue shop. He was ready for a change anyway, he said, so he sold his home across the street before the new store opened.

Others, though, say the restaurant is a welcome addition to the neighborhood — including Chris Itteilag, the man who bought Savage’s home.

Itteilag, a residential real estate agent, said those opposed to the restaurant are offering a “gross misrepresentation” of what it’s like to live on the block.

In his presentation to the zoning board, he alleged that the landlords opposed to Call Your Mother have tenants who are themselves leaving trash behind. He also included photos of cars with parking tickets, alleging that they belonged to residents, rather than customers, who are “illegally parking.”

“Myself and other supporters actually live and reside on the block with our families,” Itteilag said.

Josh Randle said he bought his O Street home just over a year ago, and going to Call Your Mother has become his daughter’s favorite part of the day. When mornings are too hectic for him or his wife to cook breakfast, “Call your Mother saves the day, every time,” he said.

“From 8 to 2, as far as I’m concerned, they’re our neighbors,” Randle said.

On Tuesday, Judith Fedo and her husband, Joseph Dains, sat on a public bench near Call Your Mother as their 3-year-old son, Alva, yelled for them to watch just how fast he could run down the sidewalk. The family had come for lunch as a show of support after seeing news about the zoning dispute on Facebook and Nextdoor. Dains, a 33-year-old PhD student studying political theory at Georgetown University, said he comes to the shop almost daily and would hate to see it go.

“It was not rowdy,” Fedo, 40, said as she ate a turkey and jalapeño bagel sandwich with melted cheese. “I want to know what idyllic community these neighbors who are complaining are envisioning in their heads, because when you look around you can sense this kind of, you know, European vibe, this old-world vibe. And when you go to the U.K. or Europe, it’s not stagnant and super quiet.”

Across from them was Joe Katalinas’s home, just a few doors down from the restaurant. The 90-year-old who has lived in this home since 1987 said that Call Your Mother customers sometimes sit on his stoop to eat, but said it has not bothered him.

“I don’t mind it at all. They’re going to sit somewhere … I’m used to it,” Katalinas said. “I get tired of people complaining about this neighborhood.”