The Atlantic Lunch was located on the first floor of the Atlantic Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. and was opened early in the 20th century.

What is amazing is how we found this photo. Friend Ed Babcock was looking for something else and stumbled upon this reference to a Carr China bowl. It turns out that this single, humble piece of cracked restaurant ware became the focal point for a treatise called: "Ode to a Lunch Bowl: The Atlantic Lunch as an Interface Between St. Mary's County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.," written by George L. Miller. Click here to read the PDF.

As you will see in the document, the ID took just a bit of detective work after it was found in a landfill. This is what the backstamp revealed:

CA-----CHINA
E.-----DAMS CO.
HOTEL DEPT.

A former cashier at the Atlantic Hotel above the restaurant was located and could remember that E. B. Adams Co. supplied the restaurant with its china, and E. B. Adams, luckily still in business was able to verify that Carr China would have made the bowl.

Atlantic Lunch was originally located in the Atlantic Hotel - 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW - until 1925. It's confusing because the photo at left must be its second location, next to Gilman Drugs, but that is also in the 600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The restaurant closed in 1964.