Chadwicks in Old Town recently won a write-in effort to be named the winner in ALXnow’s Best bar in Alexandria poll.
With only 15 spots available, Chadwicks (203 The Strand) wasn’t listed in the poll, which was held July 31 to Aug. 14. Owner Trae Lamond says that what followed was a grassroots effort for customers to cast write-in votes. After duplicate votes were excluded, Chadwicks edged out the competition and won the poll.
“It is impressive,” Lamond told ALXnow. “I have a chip on my shoulder. I think Chadwicks is more than just the best bar, I think we’re one of the best restaurants in the city.”
A city native, Lamond started working as a bartender at Chadwicks in 2004, and then bought the business in 2015. He’s a 1999 graduate of T.C. Williams High School (now Alexandria City High School) and lives with his wife and two children in the house he grew up in in the city’s Rosemont neighborhood.
Chadwicks opened on the waterfront in 1979, and Lamond previously told ALXnow that the restaurant will never change.
ALXnow: Nice win. Pretty impressive to win a write-in campaign, don’t you think?
Lamond: It is impressive. I have a chip on my shoulder. I think Chadwicks is more than just the best bar, I think we’re one of the best restaurants in the city. I think that we’ve been here for forever, and there’s a reason why we’ve lasted so long. We do things right. We’re not sexy. We give you what you want, right?
ALXnow: Isn’t that sexy?
Lamond: I mean, it should be. We’re Meryl Streep, right? We’re not a bikini mom. I was very upset when I found out we weren’t included [in the poll], and I said “Eff this,” and I talked to our social media team. I talked to our managers. I said, “Start texting all of your regulars. Text everybody you know. I want everyone on staff to vote. I want everyone to know, the city needs to know, who the best bar is.”
We started talking to customers and the bar, and we said, “Look, we need your support.” Would it be the end of the world if we lost this? No, not at all, but I am petty and small and I want to win this, so we dumped man hours into this. We needed the people that love us to go online for 30 seconds, type our name in and make sure we win, and to be honest, I didn’t expect we would.
ALXnow: You’ve got a degree in history and art from James Madison University. Was the plan to be an art historian?
Lamond: Graduate was the plan. I love history. Also, there’s no math, and I was terrible at higher math. Algebra and above just wasn’t for me. I’ve always had a weird confidence in myself that like, oh I’m going to graduate. I’m gonna need a job, and I’m gonna start somewhere at the bottom, and I’m gonna finagle my way up, and it was gonna be in an office, but then I got stuck in restaurants and just never left.
ALXnow: By the time you bought Chadwicks you’d already been working here for 11 years. That’s a long time. Did you know you wanted to buy it?
Lamond: No. I was going to work here as a server, and I was going to eventually write a resume and get a real job. I just started working so I could pay rent to get out of my parent’s house. Then, after a year of working here, I was 24 and I was making almost six figures bartending. You know what, dude? I was crushing it.
Back then, the Fish Market was open, Union Street Public House was open and Chadwicks was open. There was very little competition in this part of Old Town back then and I was working five days a week. I loved it, and there were perks like meeting girls, and stuff like that. Eventually I met the right one and stopped meeting other girls.
ALXnow: You met her at Chadwicks?
Lamond: Yeah, I picked her up while I was working.
ALXnow: But owning a restaurant wasn’t on your radar?
Lamond: I did not know I wanted to own this place. It took about two years to get the whole thing figured out that I was going to buy the restaurant. At that point, I think I’d also just gotten a real estate license. I hated that.
ALXnow: You were still thinking about getting a real job?
Lamond: Except for a very limited few who say, “This is my life, this is my path,” most people get burned out every nine months in this industry. At one point I wanted to be a teacher, a firefighter, I was studying for the LSATs when my wife found out that we were gonna have a baby, so I decided I couldn’t work, be a parent and go to law school. I didn’t do that.
I think real estate was the furthest I ever went. I took a course that got me there, and then I might have sold like three houses in two years, and I was bad at it and hated it.
ALXnow: What advice do you give young entrepreneurs?
Lamond: I’m not the most remarkable bartender that’s ever worked at Chadwicks. There was a little bit of being in the right place at the right time, but I would say pay attention. Learn your craft. It sounds silly because a lot of people are just waiting tables until they find a real job, a lot of people that have been doing this for their whole lives don’t give themselves any respect.
If you like what you do, stick with it. There’s always room to move up, and being your own boss is probably the coolest sh** on the planet. Like, if that’s where you want to be, go for it.
ALXnow: Are you happy with only ever having one Chadwicks?
Lamond: Yes, 100%. You’ve got Clyde’s, which is our fancy older cousin, and you’ve got Applebee’s, which is our redneck hillbilly half cousin, and I don’t know if Chadwicks makes sense anywhere else in the world other than right here. We’ve established ourselves as the go-to spot in Alexandria.
ALXnow: What does the future hold for Chadwicks?
Lamond: The future for Chadwicks looks bright. You know, we’re gonna keep being the best bar and serving the best burgers. It’s hard for me in the way I’m wired, because I always want to change and improve, but a big part of Chadwicks is that what we’re doing is working, and people aren’t asking us to change anything. So, it’s just like watching “Cheers.” You want to keep it the same, keep it comfortable.
