Most families have some sort of communal food tradition that brings them together. Maybe it is a Sunday supper or spaghetti on Wednesday nights. My family always came together by eating Chinese dim sum on the weekends.
Originating from the Cantonese food tradition in tea houses, dim sum is a Chinese meal traditionally enjoyed during the “brunch” hours. Delicate dishes of shareable items, smaller than American appetizers and larger than a snack, are traditionally brought around to tables in steam carts for guests to choose and share. As such, dim sum is translated to “touching heart,” a term used to denote small food and the drinking of tea.
This alligator don’t want none unless you got bao buns, hun.
Unfortunately, finding good Chinese food (or dim sum for that matter) in Northern Virginia is hard to find. Let me clarify: I am talking about Chinese food, not Asian food. If you open the realm to all Asian food, there are myriad excellent options in the area. Chinese food, however, is less easy to find.
If you talk to anybody from Northern Virginia about Chinese food, they undoubtedly will say “go to Peking Gourmet Inn.”
Ok. Is the Peking duck there good?
Yes.
Is anything else?
No. Sorry. That’s a hot take, but I wasn’t impressed by its offerings outside of the Peking duck. What else is there? Peter Chang? Peter Chang is a chain that was impressive fifteen years ago. I’ve been to a few of his restaurants around Virginia, and I wasn’t wowed.
All of the good Chinese food in the DMV is in Maryland. If you read the Eater guide to the best Chinese food in the DMV, the first seven are in Maryland. If you want the best in the area, look no further than Noodle King in Colesville. Get the Hong Kong Fried Fish.
But if you are in Northern Virginia, I think I’ve found the best Chinese food (i.e. Dim Sum). Far superior to other area heavy-hitters Hong Kong Pearl, Mark’s Duck House, and Han Palace, Springfield’s Hot Peppercorn Asian Cuisine & Bar offers hot and fresh Chinese food at prices that won’t break the bank (unlike Han Palace).
This excellent restaurant is almost never mentioned, therefore it is a perfect qualifier for something offbeat. It’s not in Trip Advisor, Yelp, or NextDoor suggestions for local Chinese cuisine. But it’s better than anything else out there. Located in the far corner of a bustling shopping center (Springfield Plaza) off Old Keene Mill Road, the restaurant sits next to TWO busy grocery stores, Trader Joe’s and Giant. It would be easy to look past the restaurant in the ocean of vehicles and cart returns. But it’s there, and it is delicious.
For years, the space was occupied by Golden Hong Kong, a decent restaurant that offered select dim sum delicacies. In March 2021, chef Alvin Zhang took the helm and renamed the restaurant Hot Peppercorn, adding spicy dishes inspired by the Sichuan province.
Every time we have gone to the restaurant, it has been only half full. I think that is largely attributed to its location and not the quality of the restaurant itself. The space is well lit, clean, and adequately distanced.
Unlike most dim sum restaurants, you order your dim sum from a sheet of paper like a sushi roll order at a Japanese restaurant. There are no carts to wheel around your food to you. Although the restaurant takes a hit for authenticity, you are also almost always guaranteed your food is coming out hot and fresh each time. It also might explain why dim sum at Hot Peppercorn is served all day. I can’t tell you how many times we have been served lukewarm or cold dishes at other restaurants in the area.
Some of my favorites for dim sum are the fried taro dumplings (Woo Kok), sticky rice in lotus leaf (Lo Mai Gai), and of course, the Siu Mai.
The Xiao long bao, or soup dumplings, are not earth-shattering but hit the spot. They come out hot and fresh, which makes them delicious after slurping the pork broth under the chewy dough that surrounds it. Pair that with the restaurant’s tangy black vinegar, and they are a staple for your meal. When is Din Tai Fung opening a DC area location?
Unfortunately, there are only a few items my family has ordered aside from the dim sum. The lo mein (for the kids) was decent and the more “adult” gai see chow mein was crispy and flavorful. It just means I need to go back for more dishes, right? The fried calamari was another off-dim sum item that I would highly recommend. The batter is light and spicy — a perfect companion to the Jasmine tea they serve there. My wife loves the fried turnip cakes and the Sesame Shrimp (from the regular menu).
As always, you need to eat all of your dim sum with copious amounts of hot chili oil, which is unsurprisingly spicy at a restaurant of its kind.
For a restaurant not exclusively known for dim sum, Hot Peppercorn tops my list for the best Chinese food in the area. If you don’t mind suffering PTSD from the parking situation, I highly recommend this offbeat eat for a weekend meal shared with your family.
Not unlike the history-shaping year we are currently having, 2001 altered the course of American history when the terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001. I was just starting my senior year at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach, VA. I didn’t get my news and information from the Internet back then because I had my parents and the television. I was in school when the attacks occurred, so I didn’t see anything about it with my own eyes until that afternoon. After watching the planes crash into the World Trade Center a few times, I was done with it. I don’t think I processed it, but I was at least finished with learning more about it at the time.
The Internet looked much different in the early fall of 2001. The majority of Americans did not have broadband Internet. Most of us, like my family, used AOL and a dial-up modem to get online. I talked with imaginary friends in chat rooms. I left tacky away messages on Instant Messenger. I printed off driving directions from MapQuest. To be completely honest, I mostly used the Internet to get one thing: illegally downloaded music. Just kidding, of course.
(Vice.com)
News websites in 2001 look blocky and archaic by today’s standards, yet I still remember them well. In the process of thinking about a post to do for this week, I began thinking about any connections the 9/11 terrorist attacks had to Northern Virginia. As a relatively recent import into the area, I had no prior knowledge save from what I have gathered on the subject over the years. Truth be told, the facts surrounding the actual attacks are still an open wound for most of us.
In a year where we are still hemorrhaging from emotional bleeding, I felt another angle was needed. In my research, I discovered an interesting connection between two of the terrorists that flew a plane into the Pentagon and the means in which they gained credentials to purchase a ticket for American Airlines Flight 77. It involved a DMV in a slowly-approaching dead mall about ten minutes from where I live now. This is the story of how I found that DMV Express location today, using the modern Internet to recall the halcyon days of the digital age.
Let me tell you a quick story.
The 7-Eleven off Leesburg Pike where Hanjour and al-Mihdhar bartered for false IDs. (Eng Photo)
On August 1, 2001, Saudi Arabian nationals Hani Hanjour and Khalid al-Mihdhar traveled to Falls Church, VA, to a 7-Eleven off Leesburg Pike to obtain fraudulent documentation. One of the employees there, Luis Martinez-Flores, was willing to openly expose a very broad loophole in the process for obtaining Virginia identification for a price of $100. The three men proceeded to the DMV Express in the lower level of Springfield Mall. Hanjour and al-Mihdhar used a false address provided by Flores, 5913 Leesburg Pike, just a short drive from the 7-Eleven where Flores worked. The address, once verified and falsely signed by Flores as truth, provided the necessary criteria for Hanjour and al-Mihdhar to claim themselves as legal residents in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They received their identity cards that day.
IDs in hand, both were able to purchase tickets on American Airlines Flight 77, which departed from Dulles International Airport for Los Angeles, California, at 8:10 am on September 11, 2001. These two men, along with three other Saudi Arabian nationals, hijacked the flight, crashing it into the western side of the Pentagon an hour and twenty minutes later at 9:37 am. Fifty-eight passengers lost their lives. An additional 125 fatalities occurred on the ground at the Pentagon.
I want to focus less on the horrific tragedy of the day and instead explore what occurred a few miles down the road from where I now live. Where were those places? Specifically, what happened to the DMV Express? We have been going to the newly renovated Springfield Town Center since it reopened in 2014, and have never seen a DMV in the mall. Like the majority of the structure itself, it seemed that the DMV Express was swallowed in the mall’s closure in 2012 before cocooning itself in a two-year construction phase. What emerged, Springfield Town Center, looked nothing like its shabby predecessor. The DMV Express was gone, alongside most of the previous stores in it. The posh space has now shed all its drab architectural insecurities for clean lines and a bland color scheme that would make most asylums blush.
How could I recall the past and pinpoint exactly where the DMV Express was located? I can go to the same place I go for the answers to all my problems….the Internet! But where to start?
A quick Google search on “DMV Express, Springfield VA” leads you to the DMV Select, located caddy-corner to Springfield Town Center Today. No information on the former DMV Express exists in the search results, even on the first four pages. In fact, it looks like there are no locations named “DMV Express” in the state of Virginia.
I had to unpeel another layer of the Internet. I wasn’t ready to go to the core just yet. If possible, I hoped to avoid places like Reddit and 4chan, the figurative center of Dante’s Internet inferno where simps sit frozen in ice suffering next to unabashed “Karens,” anti-vaxxers, and people who chew too loudly.
The next step was video. Thankfully, I found something. I typed in “Springfield Mall 1990s” into the search bar. The first hit was from a user by the name of “SignalsOverTheAir” who reminisces about the original Springfield Mall before it closed in 2012. Sure enough, the very first thing he mentions is the DMV Express. I can finally see what it looks like. But the shop as it existed in 2012 was closed up, so I had no bearings to go on. I had to go further.
Results from DOBSearch (Screencap)
My next step was to look it up on a website I have used before for looking up businesses, dobsearch.com. Upon searching, I was able to find the business inside the mall. But the address it gave was not specific to any shop. The telephone number was old and dead. Another dead end.
Through the number, however, I was able to find an old PDF document from the DMV that listed different customer service centers around the country. It had a slightly different address for the one in Springfield.
6691-A Springfield Mall Springfield, VA 22150
Unfortunately, when you type in that address into Google, it takes you to a Taco Bamba Taqueria down the road. As delicious as those tacos are, it did not quench my curious appetite for answers. Then it hit me. If I wanted to find the old Internet, I had to go to the one place that stores it for safe keeping, the Internet Archive!
The problem was I couldn’t use on a search team like today. I had to have a website in mind. What would it be? I put in the stupidest and simplest answer I could think of: www.springfieldmall.com. Bingo.
Springfield Mall Website, c. 2002 (Internet Archive)
Apparently the mall slogan back in 2002 was “Turn up the fun.” No wonder they wanted to gut the place and start over. Looking at the menu on the right, I chose the “Service and Financial” hyperlink, which gave me an old school list of relevant businesses. Seven businesses down from some place called “Back Rubs USA” was the DMV Express. I finally found it! It had a different 1-800 number and everything! The best part was, the directory finally showed it’s location, on Lower Level A section. Thankfully when I clicked it, it took me to a c. 2002 map of the mall. Looking at the map, I was able to decipher exactly where it was, and what happened to the location of arguably one of the most famous DMV locations in American history.
The former DMV Express is now Eyebrow Designer 21 (Eng Photo)
The former DMV Express was located just outside the lower level of the Target store underneath the escalators. Today, the location is currently a beauty spa and salon called Eyebrow Designer 21. In the few times I would peak out to get footage for this video after making a Target run, the place always seemed busy. It looks like a nice establishment. Good Yelp reviews. I wonder if they know what happened there nearly twenty years ago.
I am thankful that modern technology allowed me to reach back two decades into the past to find what I was looking for. In a year when everything is crushing us down, rehashing the sordid details of 9/11 seemed too much for me. Using the Internet for an offbeat scavenger hunt, however, is another story.
Have you ever traveled down a road and wondered if it was named after a certain person or place? That question led me down a rabbit-hole of Northern Virginia history, culminating in a search for nineteenth-century ruins and long-forgotten gravestones.
While my husband and I were driving through Springfield one day, not long after moving to Alexandria, we ended up on a long stretch of highway called Old Keene Mill Road. We noticed that the name “Keene Mill” seemed to have significance: the name showed up on a school, several shopping centers, and apartment complexes.
“I wonder if there really was a mill here,” my husband mused.
The short answer: yes. There was, in fact, a Keene’s Mill.
Keene Mill Historial Marker on Huntsman Rd. in Springfield (Matthew Eng Photo)
Keene’s Mill was a saw and grist mill that stood approximately at the intersection of Pohick Creek and Old Keene Mill Road. I found the historical marker for the site online; it states that the mill was built “by James Keene between 1796 and 1800, when it was expanded, stood on the north side of the original Keene Mill Road right-of-way.”1 What caught my attention was the final line on the marker: “Two mill races are all that remain on the site.”
From then on, I had two goals:
Find out more about Keene’s Mill, and
Find out what a mill race was and try to find them.
History of the Mill
Alexandria Gazette, November 1, 1855
As I searched for information about the mill, I learned something quite shocking: William H. Keene, James Keene’s grand-nephew and owner of the mill from 1849 until 1855,2 was in jail for murder. An Alexandria Gazette article from November 1, 1855, stated that “a man named Hall was stabbed by a man named Keene . . . on last Saturday, from the effects of which he died on Monday.”3 Two days later, on November 3, the Gazette revealed that Keene was in jail. Keene did not appear again in my searches until April 4, 1856. The Gazette briefly mentioned that “Wm. H. Keene, confined in the jail of Fairfax county, for the murder of Lewis Q. Hall, escaped on Wednesday.” Further in the paper was a description:
He is about 45 years old, 5 feet 1C or 11 inches high, broad shoulders and stout made, long hair and bushy whiskers, high cheek bones, large nose turned up and spreading at the end, and depressed about the centre, small grey eyes, and very bad countenance.
Alexandria Gazette, April 4, 1856
It seems, though, that Keene’s freedom was short lived—he was caught the next day and returned to jail. His trial commenced in November, and in a Gazette article on November 15, 1856, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang in January 1857.
Jack Hiller, a Northern Virginia historian, took an interest in Keene’s case in the late 1980s. He meticulously combed through archives and court records to find out exactly what had happened between William Keene and “the man named Hall.” One document he found was an inquisition, held at the house of a woman named Maria Sutherland.4 The inquisition stated that “Lewis Q. Hall came to his death by William Keene on the 27th day of October 1855 by means of a knife in the hands of said Keene.”5
Another document, a statement Lewis Q. Hall signed before his death, gave a few more details: he was accompanied by a man named John Barker, and he was looking for a woman named Maria Hall. He continued, “when I left his door yard followed by said Keene and proceeded at two steps toward his mill he threw his arm around me and inflicted the wound.” He told Barker that he had been cut. A third document, Barker’s testimony, stated that he saw Keene take out the knife and stab Hall; Keene then invited Barker for a drink and Barker accepted, but since Keene could find no liquor and Hall followed, Barker took Hall to Maria Sutherland’s home. The cut was quite bad; Barker said, “the bowels had come out through the cut.”6
Hiller puzzled over this turn of events, asking why Keene would attack Hall for no reason, or why Barker would accept the invitation for a drink, even when he knew Hall was wounded. Hiller suggested that none of them were “rational,” and it turns out he was correct. Hiller recounted several letters from Keene’s family members and acquaintances, all lending their own extra details: drinking may have been involved, “Maria Hall” was a red herring, and it was all an accident.7 One letter even said that one of the jurors had been pressured by the other jurors to give a guilty verdict.8
In light of this evidence, the governor of Virginia at the time, Henry Wise, postponed Keene’s punishment twice. Eventually, Wise commuted Keene’s punishment to ten years in prison. In 1857, Keene went to the Virginia State Prison in Richmond; he was forty-seven at the time. Keene’s fate after that is unknown; any prison records that may have existed were destroyed in the Civil War.9
Keene Mill property drawn by Jack Hiller (Jack Hiller)
The property was sold in 1857, and records indicated that by 1869 the mill was no longer standing.10 Since then, the land had changed ownership several times. Portions of it were abandoned and others developed. One account of the Old Keene Mill Road development read, “What is now Old Keene Mill Road was originally called Rolling Road No. 2. It was built by William Fitzhugh to transport his tobacco to market in Alexandria. In the 1920s, the rise of the automobile led to confusions between the two Rolling Roads. As the Keene Mills had ceased operation, Rolling Road No. 2 was renamed “Old Keene Mill Road.”11 However, I could not locate any other sources or information about it, though Hiller mentioned that Old Keene Mill Road, once two lanes, was converted to four lanes in 1979.
Currently, the land is that contains the mill races is part of the Fairfax County Park Authority.
Searching for the Mill Races
When I began my research, I had no idea what a mill race was. However, I was intrigued that such an odd part of history still had some visible traces, and I wanted to find them. I found out that mill races were man-made channels that essentially run water to and from mill wheels, so we’d be looking for ruts in the land, essentially. One other person had looked for—and found—the mill races in the winter of 2009 and provided photos, so I was convinced we’d be able to find them.12 The same person also noted that a Keene family graveyard was nearby, in a subdivision.
I’d underestimated how tough it would be to find the mill races in the summertime. Also, the day before we’d had tropical-storm-level wind and rain, so the ground was soft, wet, and extremely muddy. Nevertheless, Matt and I entered the Pohick Trail one hot afternoon. The trail ended as fast as it began. From the end of the trail on, there was a carpet of green and fallen branches with no indication of where to go. Matt forged ahead, though, and moved deeper into the woods.
“What direction should we go?” he asked.
“The guy in the article said he walked in the direction of Pohick Creek,” I answered. So we moved on. Nothing resembling what we’d seen in the photos was visible. I tried to remember that the photos were taken over a decade ago and in the dead of winter, so they’d definitely look different by now. Our feet squished in the earth and thorns ripped at our jeans. I walked into multiple spiderwebs, which reminded me I was definitely not an outdoorswoman.
I did, however, feel an appreciation for the history that had happened on this land. Somewhere nearby, Lewis Hall and William Keene had gotten into a fight. Hall had died and the course of Keene’s life had changed forever—and the mill for which the road was named would only exist another ten or so years.
We eventually came upon the creek. It was a pretty, quiet space. The water ran clear, an indication that human hands hadn’t meddled with it too much. However, the beer cans nearby suggested that we weren’t the only ones who had ventured this far into the woods. We both recalled Hiller’s hand-drawn map of the mill races, and walked up the creek trying to find one of them.
Possible section of mill race off Pohick Creek (Matthew Eng Photo)
Eventually we came upon a small rut in the earth that fed into the creek. If our map calculations are correct, this was one of the mill races. We decided to walk further down along the creek and see if we could find the other one. We found piles of hand-cut stones, and, after consulting the map and a couple of other sources, surmised that they may have been pieces of the original Old Keene road.13
We blundered around for a bit and thought we may have found the other mill race, but as we walked, we realized it was just a man-made runoff. Along the way, we found a large rusted-out car, more beer cans, and deer tracks.
Keene family plot, Fairfax County (Matthew Eng Photo)
When we emerged from the woods, a storm was threatening. There was no way we could venture back in, so we decided to review our photos when we got home. We did, however, track down the Keene graveyard. It sat right in the center of a townhome complex about a mile and a half away—a small fenced-in plot with two visible gravestones, one of which read “Addison Keene.” A couple of yards away, a kid played on a basketball court and watched us with a wary eye.
Conclusion
I met both the goals I set for myself. I did find out more about Keene’s Mill—most notably that the final Keene that owned the mill was tried for murder, found guilty, sentenced to hang, escaped from prison, and eventually had his death sentence commuted. I do have to wonder if anyone who named the road, the school, the shopping centers, and the residential complexes knew of this history. It’s a subtle reminder that roads and other places could be named after people or events with a dark past.
As for the mill races, I’m not completely sure we found one. However, having the opportunity to hike through the woods and experience something I wouldn’t have otherwise was a treat—mosquito bites and all.
Footnotes
“Keene’s Mill Historical Marker,” HMdb.org: The Historical Marker Database, last modified July 29, 2016, Link.
Hiller, Jack. “Murder at the Mill: My Search for William H. Keene,” Online PDF. According to Hiller, Keene turned the mill over to a Fairfax attorney in 1855 and gave him the power to sell it pay off legal and personal debts.
Alexandria Gazette, Nov. 1, 1855.
Hiller, “Murder,” 57. The house where Barker took Hall after the stabbing.
Hiller, “Murder,” 55.
Hiller, “Murder,” 56.
Hiller, “Murder,” 58-60.
Hiller, “Murder,” 61.
Hiller, “Murder,” 78.
Hiller, Murder,” 77.
John Pasierb, “Was There Ever a Mill on ‘Old Keene Mill’ Road?” accessed on August 1, 2020, Link.
Andy99. “Suburban Archaeology 1: On the Trail of Keene’s Mill,” March 22, 2009, Link.
Offbeat NOVA 