Pennyroyal Station — Restaurant in Mount Rainier

Pennyroyal Station is proof that Mount Rainier's food scene is one to watch. Here's why you should run, not walk, to Pennyroyal Station just across the D.C.-Maryland border:

1. Food: Pulling from stints at top-rated spots in D.C., the chef created a menu that pushes the boundaries of comfort food. The smokey brisket and marrow mac and cheese is prime example. Items like fried green tomatoes and fried buttermilk chicken bring people of all backgrounds to Pennyroyal Station.

Each item my buddy and I ordered on a Wednesday evening was quality. We started with the fried green tomatoes, perfectly fried preserving the tomato's texture. It came with garlic and chili oil that we wanted more of.

Next came the slow-roasted pork biscuits. The biscuits on their own are worth coming back for and combined with flavorful pork, sold!

We finished with a plate of three warm chocolate chip cookies with enough small chocolate chips to balance the dough. They are among the best I've had in the D.C. area.

2. Drinks: Often restaurants win at food or drinks, but rarely both. Enter Pennyroyal Station. Their drink menu is like their food menu- pushing the boundaries of comfort. There's a classic cocktail list and a signature cocktail list that includes drinks like the "Hanky Panky" that combines gin, vermouth, fernet and caramelized sweet onion. For a more sweet drink, order the "Honeycrisp Fizz" with applejack, apple syrup, lemon , egg white and soda. The drink menu includes wine and beer as well.

3. Price: For quality food, the prices are much more affordable compared to restaurants in D.C. Each item is $1-$3 cheaper than what you'd expect in D.C.

4. Space: The restaurant and bar are in two historic buildings combined into one- an old bank foyer and a trolley station that took people to and from D.C. for decades. The outside is painted with a bright mural from Colorado-based artist Yulia Avgustinovich, originally from Belarus. The inside pulls from the history of the buildings while creating a slickly designed space. During the pandemic, Pennyroyal Station limits indoor masked seating and opened their outdoor patio with heaters.

5. Service: It's superb. From the moment you check in with the host to when the server greets you, they balance friendliness with efficiency and speed without feeling pressured to leave. The service invites you to relax and be at home.

6. Neighborhood: Mount Rainier is full of life with murals painted across town, art studios in warehouses and local businesses in old brick buildings. With more highly anticipated restaurants coming to Mount Rainier, you can easily do an outdoor food crawl. In a few months, a wine bar sourcing wine from underrepresented regions like the Middle East and Mexico is opening next to Pennyroyal Station.

Again, run, don't walk to Mount Rainier's...

I was excited to bring my boyfriend here for both our 1st time at Pennyroyal Station. The restaurant from the street outside looks so inviting and quaint. The pictures online of the food looked amazing. So of course I wanted to try a local spot in my old stomping ground. The inside was a quaint and cute as the outside. Our waitress was very nice and congenial. She made lots of recommendations and we decided to try most of them.

Unfortunately, we were disappointed with 95% of the food rec's. We ordered 3 appetizers......the crabby deviled eggs, the Parker buns w bacon jam, and the brisket and bone marrow Mac and cheese.

The crabby deviled eggs tasted like all yellow mustard and no mayo.....very vinegar-y. They also had this spicy relish on the top, as well. If it hadn't stated so on the menu, you would never have known there was crab in them! There was NO taste of crab AT ALL!! They were the worst disappointment, as deviled eggs are my absolute FAVE!! The Parker buns looked like rolls from the grocery store that were just popped into the oven. They were charred and dry. The bacon jam that came with them, left a lot to be desired. If you didn't tell me it was bacon, I would not have known it was bacon. It tasted like some kind of really over-smoked pork, but def not bacon. The consistency was also not appealing. It tasted and looked like paté. To ground up and pasty for me.

The brisket and bone marrow Mac and cheese looked like suped up Craft white cheddar Mac and cheese from the box with some brisket in it. It was not terrible but def not anything to write home about.

The cocktail I ordered, The La-ti-da, was hughly recommended by our waitress but it was unexpectedly spicy from a liquere that was added that didn't specify it was spicy. I sent it back and asked for a different one. The waitress said oh that spuce is from this particular liquere. So she knew it was spicy but didnt mention it. However, she was very gracious in reordering me something else.

The brisket platter main course was just so so. The collard greens were spicy, but not specified as such on the menu. The sliced brisket didnt have much flavor and the sclises were 1/3 fat....with the fat SMACK in the middle of the slices. The biscuits were the ONLY part of the meal that were amazing! They were flaky and buttery and perfectly crispy.

Overall, we were both highly disappointed to drop close to $100 on a meal that was less...

I was invited to pennyroyal for a party as I arrived there were no available chairs although I seen many chairs unoccupied. For some reason I couldn’t have one even at the bar. There were unoccupied chairs, the owner of this restaurant watch me look for chairs for over 15 minutes without giving me any help or telling me there’s nothing else available. He also had a chair and I asked could I have the chair that he was using since I never seen him sit down in it and he said no… As a patron spending money, this was not fair…as a black man I will never come to this establishment again maybe I was not the color he wanted there so he didn’t provide any type of customer service. I could not sit with the party and sat at the bar because there was no chairs for me. The chairs that was at the bar I literally had to fight for as they were saving them for someone else. It was so weird almost like telling me go somewhere else. I spent my money there and I was a patron and treated like I was not welcome to this establishment. I was very appalled and I will never step foot back into this place again it’s not for people like me. Maybe other people of color but my age and my face was not good enough for this owner and he provided terrible customer service as the table stacked with dirty dishes. There was gratuity added on the party so they could careless about maintenance. The bartender with the dreads was most annoying. He had every bit about three people in front of him and act like he was in a big club making drinks he ignored me the whole time at the bar, as I sit in front of his face waving for assistance….it was the most annoying thing as the drinks were mediocre. This bartender also came to the party table and dropped off drinks without picking up one dirty dish. He was the worst and most disappointing bartender I’ve had in years acting like he didn’t see my black face asking for assistance as he was suppose to assist the party. The other bartender soon came to help. The bartender with dreads acted as if he had the mentality blacks don’t tip and I actually tipped 20% just to make a point here. Thanks to the other bartender for stepping in to help out, it be your own people smh. Instead of having side bar conversations about the guests the bartender with the dreads needs to do better with...