Signatures (restaurant)

Signatures was a restaurant in Washington D.C., opened by Jack Abramoff in February 2002. Expensive and lavishly appointed with expensive memorabilia, Villeroy & Boch chargers and Christofle flatware, Signatures was used by Abramoff in coordination with his skyboxes and foreign trips to spend money primarily given by Indian tribes on politicians. During 17 months between 2002 and 2003, Signatures gave away $180,000 of food and drinks. The restaurant was located at 801 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It closed on November 16, 2005.

Signatures rivaled The Capital Grille, opened in 1994, as the premier high-end Republican restaurant in the city. It was more successful than Abramoff's two other Washington D.C. food ventures, Archives Restaurant and Stacks Delicatessen, both kosher eateries.

In 2002, the political website PoliticsPA named it to their list of restaurants most frequented by politicians.

Restaurant's use in Abramoff's federal lobbying

Jack Abramoff billed his tribal clients hundreds of thousands of dollars for meals at Signatures. Billing, campaign finance records, and restaurant records show, for example, that the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians paid Greenberg Traurig over $5,600, and that the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians paid as much as $20,000 for dozens of luncheon and dinner events a month.

Abramoff's preferred table was Table 40, where Tom DeLay, Dana Rohrabacher, Bob Ney, and John Doolittle were his regular guests, getting their meals comped.