Washington, D.C

After a D.C. restaurant closes, selling pieces of a dream

Published

2 years ago

April 20, 2024

After a D.C. restaurant closes, selling pieces of a dream

Tables and decorative plants: make an offer.

In 2017, Michael and Hatice Rosato opened Sospeso, a restaurant that featured eastern Mediterranean cuisine and Michael’s homemade vermouth. The 60-table establishment, in a converted office on Northeast Washington’s H Street corridor, was named for the “Neapolitan practice of anonymously paying for a coffee … for someone else in need.”

Michael had spent more than a decade toiling in the food industry. Finally, he had his own place. And, for seven years, its doors remained open.

Sospeso survived the coronavirus. It survived inflation and confusion over tipping. It survived the Rosato family’s move from the H street area to the suburbs.

But, in March, the Rosatos decided to close. Business was flagging. Staff members had been carjacked. Crime in D.C. was on the rise. The restaurant’s carrying costs — $50,000 per month — were too high.

Day after day, the couple felt that they were just working for their landlord.

They had dreamed a dream, and it had come true.

But when a restaurant closes, the story isn’t over. Now, everything had to go.

Reader’s Digest Condensed Books: make an offer.

Sospeso served its last meal on April 7, and a liquidation sale was advertised on Instagram and by word of mouth for the following weekend. Dozens of people showed up, picking through what remained of the restaurant as ’90s rock blared.

The Rosatos weren’t just selling plates and flatware. All of the countless objects a modern restaurant demands were up for sale: Candlesticks. Half-empty bottles of alcohol. Deep-fryer baskets. Soup tureens. A cactus.

“We both have done a lot. We have done everything possible to make this work,” Hatice said. “Even your best is not enough.”

She stood among the shoppers, answering questions as her young children — Miles and Siena — gave impromptu restaurant tours. Miles wore a fedora and a skinny tie. Siena wore a princess dress and earmuffs.

The children felt at home here, Hatice said. A small loft space above Sospeso’s second floor was outfitted with a play kitchen where they whiled away idle hours.

Olivier Caillabet, who runs the ramen restaurant Toki Underground two blocks away, browsed through books in the second-floor dining room before heading to the kitchen. His feelings about Sospeso’s departure: “It sucks.”

Many H Street restaurants opened businesses more than a decade ago amid the corridor’s resurgence. Since then, costs and competition have increased. According to data from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, 75 percent of restaurants are less profitable than they were before the pandemic.

“The food was good,” Caillabet said. “The service was good. They did everything right. It’s tough.”

Sospeso Blanco Vermouth: $49 per liter.

Grapefruit juice: 50 cents.

Emma Hollandsworth and Hakeem Bisyir had come to say goodbye. They stood in line to buy small containers of lentils and hummus as Michael negotiated prices while navigating various payment systems.

“We always loved coming,” Hollandsworth said.

“It’s a little weird in here,” Bisyir said.

“We thought it would be a happier vibe,” Hollandsworth added.

On the second floor was a painting — a mural of what looked like an Italian village with the restaurant’s name stenciled in the sky. The painting, on three large pieces of plywood, was propped in front of an exterior door. A strong wind occasionally blew the door open, knocking the plywood to the floor.

Apparently not even a portrait of the restaurant could survive.

In the end, Michael didn’t get rid of everything he’d wanted to. Other restaurateurs would come by to see what was left.

They probably would get a bargain. Michael knew the dangers of holding out for a higher price on kitchen gear during a fire sale.

Closing Sospeso helped him remember, he said, that “special things happen in restaurants.” People have stopped in to remind him what a good time they had there. Some said they started drinking vermouth because of Sospeso. An employee met his wife working there.

“I’m happy that I did it,” he said. “Before opening the restaurant, I was tired of me saying, ‘I’m going to open a restaurant.’”

Most people never get to live their dream; at least the Rosatos lived one for a while. Now, Michael can focus on bottling and selling vermouth. Hatice can turn to her jewelry business.

The book of life has many chapters.

“It feels good,” Hatice said. “We are ready to move on.”

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Washington, D.C

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

Published

12 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

4 things to know about the weather:

Chances of rain in the morning
Gusty Sunday
Chilly Monday
Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.

QuickCast

SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s

MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s

Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.

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Washington, D.C

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.

In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.

“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”

Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.

Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.

“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.

“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”

Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”

A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.

Rachel Reeves posted this image on Instagram from Washington DC on Thursday with the message: ‘Friends that run together – work together.’ Photograph: Rachel Reeves/Instagram

Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.

Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.

But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.

“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”

At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.

The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.

Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.

For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.

“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”

For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.

In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.

Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.

“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”

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