Spice Kitchen West African Grill has gone from a ghost kitchen to a kiosk in a food hall to now its own restaurant.

After a successful run as a tenant at the miXt Food Hall in Brentwood, the popular West African eatery has moved into its own space at 3124 Queens Chapel Rd., in the same shopping center as the new Lidl, which opened its doors on Valentine’s Day.

Owner Olumide Shokubi started Spice Kitchen in 2020 as a ghost kitchen at Mess Hall, a restaurant incubator near the Brookland neighborhood of D.C. The next year, it moved into miXt.

Its menu includes items like fried wings, grilled shrimp and chicken; side dishes such as jollof rice, fried plantains and spinach Efo-Riro, a popular Nigerian vegetable stew; and desserts like puff puffs, which are sweet fried dough balls.

Shokubi, a first-generation Nigerian-American who was born and raised in Prince George’s County where he currently lives, puts a special focus on on suya, a spicy meat skewer that is a popular street food in West Africa.

In 2022, it made Washingtonian‘s list of 10 great new cheap eats in the greater D.C. area, while The Washington Post said his aim was to “Chipotle-fy” Nigerian cuisine by making it accessible to everyone.

Spice Kitchen is open from noon to 9 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays.

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The Greenbelt Cinema will host a screening and discussion of a documentary about school desegregation in Prince George’s County.

In honor of Black History Month, the movie theater formerly known as Old Greenbelt Theatre will show “The Tower Road Bus” on Thursday, February 29.

The documentary focuses on the school busing efforts that brought 20 Black students from Brandywine to integrate Crestview Elementary miles away in Clinton in the 1970s.

The court-ordered integrations led to violent anti-busing protests in the county and around the country. At Crestview, the effort was overseen by Dotson Burns, Jr., the first Black principal of the majority-White school.

“They definitely didn’t want us there, and we didn’t really want to be there,” one of the 20 students, Karmalita Contee, said in an interview last year.

The 2021 documentary, which won awards at several regional film festivals, was written and directed by Michael Streissguth, who was in the third grade at Crestview when the busing began.

Sponsored by Melanie Cantwell of Long & Foster Real Estate with support from the Greenbelt Elementary PTA, the screening will start at 7 p.m. on Feb. 29, followed by a discussion featuring a panel of guests who had experience with busing in Prince George’s County.

You can see a trailer for the documentary here.

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Pinball enthusiasts have a new hotspot on the Route 1 corridor.

miXt Food Hall in Brentwood, located at 3809 Rhode Island Ave., recently added three new Stern pinball machines to its collection. The machines are themed after “Jaws,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and the band Rush.

Although it is based on the 1975 film, the “Jaws” pinball machine is a highly sought-after new release among pinball enthusiasts.

While the selection is much smaller than the dozens of pinball machines that were until recently in a backroom arcade at Mom’s Organic Market in College Park, the new miXt machines are playable using a cashless payment system.

The nearest pinball arcade to the Route 1 corridor is at Players Club on 14th Street in D.C.

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Primark is coming to the Mall at Prince George’s.

The Ireland-based affordable fashion store will move into a 30,000-square-foot space in the Hyattsville shopping center by early 2025.

The space had previously been occupied by a J.C. Penney department store, which announced it would close in 2020 amid a nationwide restructuring as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, which has owned the Hyattsville mall since 1998, at one point contemplated tearing down the J.C. Penney building and building a 360-unit apartment building with first-floor retail on the site.

Joseph F. Coradino, the CEO of PREIT, said recently that a Primark would be “a powerful magnet for driving traffic and attracting consumers” to the mall.

The move comes as Primark is expanding from two dozen locations in the U.S. to at least 60, including Potomac Mills in Woodbridge and Tysons Corner Center in Virginia.

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A new Lidl grocery store will open near Hyattsville on Valentine’s Day.

The latest outpost of the popular German chain will hold a grand opening on Wednesday, Feb. 14, at the former Price Rite location at 3104 Queens Chapel Rd., in the Avondale community of Chillum in unincorporated Prince George’s County, close to Hyattsville and Mount Rainier.

The first 100 customers in line will get gift cards ranging from $5 to $100, with special deals offered on the first day.

Located down the road from the West Hyattsville location of Aldi, a major Lidl competitor, the new 33,000-square-foot store takes up about half of the strip mall.

Other locations around D.C. include Columbia Heights, Takoma Park, and Wheaton.

The Price Rite location was previously a Giant supermarket, famous as the location of a visit from the late Queen Elizabeth II during a 1957 trip to the United States.

The store will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

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Hyattsville-based chef Tobias Dorzon was recently featured on the “CBS Mornings” show.

Dorzon, a former NFL player who now runs the popular Huncho House restaurant at University Town Center at 6451 America Blvd., was the subject of a five-minute segment on the popular channel about becoming a top chef and his unusual career path.

“Typically, you don’t see people like me, you don’t see people that have tattoos that talk the way I talk, that dress the way I dress,” he told co-host Tony Dokoupil. “I never grew up with somebody next to me saying, yeah, I can’t wait to be the next best chef.”

Since opening in 2022, Huncho House has become a popular upscale restaurant, with a menu that combines Dorzon’s love of Asian food, West African influences from his childhood and his studies at an Italian culinary school.

Dorzon will also return to the Food Network’s “Tournament of Champions” on Sunday, Feb. 18, appearing on the fifth season of the cooking competition hosted by Guy Fieri. He was previously featured on the third and fourth seasons and another Fieri show, “Guy’s Grocery Games.”

“One thing about God he going to always even the score,” he tweeted recently about his return to the show. “This year it’s personal.”

In the CBS interview, he also confirmed that he will expand across the street from his Hyattsville location opening a new restaurant with a more nightlife-like vibe, including a DJ booth.

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A group of University of Maryland students painted a new mural at the Art Works Now building in Hyattsville.

Located at 4800 Rhode Island Ave., the arts education center recently partnered with architecture and arts students at the university to design and paint the mural last fall.

Titled “The Garden of Imagination,” the colorful mural features butterflies and Black-eyed Susans, and the state flower of Maryland, and is located on the patio of Art Works Now.

Art Works Now will officially unveil the mural at an event from 10 a.m. to noon on Friday, Feb. 16.

The mural is the latest piece of public art on the Route 1 corridor, which has seen everything from statues to traffic signal box wraps to large-scale murals added as part of an overall push to be more arts-friendly.

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