Ben's Chili Bowl records

Ben's Chili Bowl was founded on August 22, 1958, by Ben Ali, a Trinidadian-born immigrant and his fiancee, Virginia Rollins. The building they chose was that of Washington's first silent movie house, the Minnehaha. The building is a contributing property to the Greater U Street Historic District. At the time, Washington was officially segregated, and U Street was known as "Black Broadway".

The U Street corridor was devastated by the 1968 civil unrest that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. During the civil unrest, black activist Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, asked Ben to keep his restaurant open and the Alis obtained permission to stay open past curfew. The restaurant fed both the police officers and firemen working to impose order on the neighborhood, as well as the black activists.

The destruction of so many businesses led to the flight of residents towards the suburbs and the economic decline of the neighborhood through the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. The vast construction of the U Street/Cardozo Metro Station across the street from the restaurant, completed in 1991, forced still more U Street businesses to close, but Ben's Chili Bowl stayed open to feed the construction workers.

In 2008, Ben's Chili Bowl opened a second location in the newly built Nationals Park. On October 7, 2009, Ben died at the age of 82. He and his wife, Virginia, had retired from the restaurant business, having passed daily operations of Ben's Chili Bowl to their sons, Kamal and Nizam.