Tucked away on a wooded Potomac road a short distance from the C&O Canal, you’ll find a restaurant with a history even more extensive than its menu. Old Angler’s Inn, with its picturesque forest backdrop, quaint building, and cozy indoor and outdoor dining spaces, is a community institution in Potomac. It’s a popular spot for weddings, birthday parties, charity fundraisers, and dinners with family and friends.
Originally, though, Old Angler’s Inn wasn’t even a restaurant. It was first built in 1860 as a clubhouse for the now-defunct “Order of the Golden Hook,” a private organization that was rumored to have several U.S. presidents among its members. It was also located near an at-the-time active gold mine, which brought more activity to the area.
In 1896, the clubhouse building burned down and was rebuilt a few years later. Since then, the Old Angler’s Inn building has served many purposes throughout the years: a private home, a post office, a grocery store and, of course, an inn where customers could stay the night.
The inn was originally operated by couple Ida and Joseph Bodine, but following the former’s death in 1944, it was passed from owner to owner. Eventually, in 1957, it was purchased by the Reges family and developed into a restaurant. It’s currently owned and operated by second-generation owner Mark Reges and his wife, who took over in 2005.
Because Old Angler’s Inn has been in operation for so long, it has a storied history and a special place in the hearts of many community members.
“So many people tell us that this is where they met their wife, where they had their rehearsal dinner or their wedding,” Reges says. “It’s been a place of comfort, adventure and romance for many people in the Washington Metropolitan area.”
Reges recalls that the inn experienced a brief period of infamy shortly after his parents took ownership. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall were hiking along the C&O Canal with many other prominent figures one rainy day and they stopped at the inn to have the lunch they had brought.
“My mother sees these 50 people in fishing gear dripping all over the carpet and kicks them off the property,” he says. “The next day, my father, who was in Miami for a case, opens the Miami Herald and sees the headline ‘Innkeeper’s Wife Kicks Out Supreme Court Justice.’ After that, we started getting guests who were just curious about meeting the woman who had the gumption to kick a Supreme Court justice off her property.”
Other prominent guests at Old Angler’s Inn over the years have included many dignitaries and politicians from nearby Washington, D.C. and actors like Tom Cruise. A young Jimmy Buffett even performed live there, as he was an unknown at the time.
“The guy who was running the restaurant at the time, his name was Andre Condon,” Reges says. “He had Jimmy performing on the weekends for food. He later told me that he’d told Jimmy at the time that he should find something else to do, because he didn’t like his voice.”
Like with any restaurant with this long of a history, Old Angler’s Inn has gone through many changes over the years — but customers wouldn’t know it just from looking at the building. The inn itself has been preserved and there is little difference between how it looked in the 1960s and how it looks today. The upgrades have been primarily centered around the kitchen, which now includes state-of-the-art equipment, and the landscaping around the building, which adds to its naturalistic, tucked-away atmosphere.
Of course, history alone isn’t enough to bring people to a restaurant. The food, which Reges describes as “American with a French twist in our sauces,” has been well-loved in the community for generations. Old Angler’s Inn has two menus: a more formal sit-down menu for the restaurant and a casual menu for its on-site beer garden. The restaurant menu changes seasonally based on which ingredients are fresh and seasonally appropriate, but certain fan-favorite dishes are regular staples. The Lamb Rack still uses Reges’ mother’s recipe and the French Onion Soup has been a beloved appetizer among regulars for decades.
Other popular dishes at the inn include seafood — such as the Whole Branzino, Red Snapper and Grilled Scallops—as well as the Caesar Salad and the OAI Cheeseburger, which is made with wagyu beef patties.
The inn has several staff members who have been working there for decades, but they’re not the only ones who have stayed there for a long time. One of the Old Angler’s Inn’s most interesting quirks is that it’s rumored to be haunted. Some customers and staff have reported seeing figures and hearing strange sounds while working late or opening early.
One longtime staff member, Fazal Rahimi, has been working at Old Angler’s Inn for decades and closes the restaurant every night.
“I’ve been alone in the building, and heard noises that sound like someone walking around … but no one was there,” Rahimi recalls. “There have been times when I turned off the light before leaving, and came back to find that someone had turned it back on. And there was one time when I came in at seven in the morning and heard what sounded like people dancing.”
Reges corroborated this by sharing an experience of his own.
“When I was a young man in my early twenties, I was upstairs cleaning something while the place was closed, and I felt compelled to turn around,” he says. “And there it was. It looked like a blue ball, and it shot out of the restaurant window from inside. Now, people can think I’m crazy if they want, but that’s what I saw.”
But not even rumors of ghostly apparitions are enough to keep people from coming to the restaurant. Some regular guests have been coming in for decades, and coming to Old Angler’s Inn is a tradition that has moved through generations of Potomac families.
“If you have those guests who are so loyal to want to come back again and again, decade after decade, then you know you’re doing something right,” Reges says. “That’s a rare thing in any business.”