Stuart Davidson; Owner of Clyde’s Bar in Washington

Stuart Davidson, a former investment banker who owned a fabled Washington, D.C., bar called Clyde’s, died Aug. 1 at a hospital in Oslo. He was 78.

The cause of death was complications of acute myelogenous leukemia.

Davidson opened Clyde’s in 1963 in Georgetown and nurtured its development into a hip, eccentric watering hole where the food was never the main attraction.

Actor Dustin Hoffman is said to have tried to stage a food fight at Clyde’s with members of the Kennedy family while in town to film “All the President’s Men.” A Saudi prince was put to work waiting tables for a week when he overspent his allowance and could not pay his tab.

The apocrypha extended to members of the regular staff. When they noticed that customers kept leaving the pickles from Clyde’s hamburgers on their plates, they reportedly began notching them to see how many times the offending items were returned to the kitchen.

A native of Dayton, Ohio, Davidson earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard. He owned several Washington restaurants, including the Old Ebbitt Grill, the 1789 Restaurant and F. Scott’s.