American restaurants in Washington, DC
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Afterwords Café & Kramerbooks
Generations of DC intelligentsia swear by this combination awesome bookstore and awesome squared brunch spot. Food is simple but very pleasing stuff, stick to your bones but pleasingly innovative – pecan-crusted catfish with hollandaise, anyone? Browsing the stacks before stuffing our guts is a favorite way to spend Washington weekends.
reviewed
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B
Old Ebbitt Grill
The Grill is something of an institution, having occupied its prime, adjacent-to-just-about-everything (the White House, the Mall, Penn Quarter) real estate since 1846. This is as down to earth as fine DC dining gets. Political players (and lots of tourists) pack into the brass and wood interior, the sound of their conversation rumbling across a dining room where good burgers, oysters and fish-and-chip type fare are rotated out almost as quickly as the clientele.
reviewed
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C
Ben’s Chili Bowl
Ben’s is to DC dining what the White House and Capitol are to sightseeing: a must-visit. To take that analogy a little further, while the White House and Capitol are the most recognizably important symbols of DC as capital, Ben’s holds the same status as regards DC, the place where people live. Opened and operated by Ben and Virginia Ali and family (it’s now adjacent to Ben Ali Lane; Ben Ali died during the research for this book, which left a large hole in the U St business community), the Bowl has been around since 1958. It’s one of the only businesses on U St to have survived the 1968 riots and the disruption that accompanied construction of the U Street Metro stop. Th…
reviewed
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Nora
Nora Pouillon remains the queen of the Washington food scene. She made her reputation serving food from farmers and ranchers – this was by many accounts the first organic restaurant in the country – and a list of the farms that provided your food is included on the menu. The way these fresh ingredients are combined is in the New American style, and while this school of cooking has been done to death, Nora was one of the originals and still executes it so well that each bite is like rediscovering what the nation can do with its ingredients: Alaskan halibut arrives on a bed of corn succotash, while Amish chicken livers soak deliciously in their own jus. All this happens in …
reviewed
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E
Poste
Named for its previous incarnation as the mail sorting room for the city post office, Poste has been busting out its A game these days. The menu is playfully attractive, divided between ‘pasta, ’ ‘pasture’ and ‘garden’ sections; the outdoor courtyard is one of the best alfresco dining spaces in the city; and the food lives up to this high bar. Chicken and corn? Sounds boring; executed flawlessly. Wreckfish with a wine-poached egg? Silly, sexy, beautifully presented and prepared. And give them credit for lightening up the fearsome tête de veau (head of cow) by rolling quail eggs, black truffles and frisee into a lovely terrine of veal cheeks. Come evenings, th…
reviewed
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F
1789
If one restaurant were to exemplify not only Georgetown, but all that George-town represents – the brownstone political aristocracy of Washington, DC – it would be 1789. Located in a smart Federal row house, the setting is colonial, cozy and distinguished all at once. As a bonus, the food is excellent. This kitchen was one of the first high-end geniuses of the ‘rustic New American’ genre, so if you’re going to try local ingredients sexed up with provincial flare, such as roasted Virginia rabbit with country ham and English peas, this is the spot to indulge your taste buds. Formal wear (jacket) is not only expected, but required for dinner.
reviewed
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America
Claiming to be DC's 'only 50-star restaurant,' this place takes the theme as far as it goes, with menus shaped like maps and mains from every state in the Union (from New York steak to grilled Mahi-Mahi, and don't forget Boston cream pie for dessert). The varied menu draws Hill-rats during the week and tourists on weekends. It's a good place to bring the family; couples might find the mall atmosphere un-romantic.
reviewed
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Good Stuff Eatery
Good Stuff chef Spike Mendelsohn is one of the most buzzed-about young chefs in the District, and he’s cut out a controversial reputation for himself. Pros? He wants to bring good food at a good price to the masses, his sliders (mini-burgers) swept the South Beach Food & Wine Festival in 2009 and he works his kitchen – this is a celebrity chef who actually cooks your meal. Cons? He does reality shows like Top Chef, wears a dumb hat and his name is ‘Spike.’ Screw it; how about the food? Well, Good Stuff is good stuff: burgers, salads, shakes and fries, done with nice attention to detail and fresh ingredients. Plus, the salad comes with cornbread (nice). Still, if you’r…
reviewed
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Agraria Farmers & Fishers
Location, location, location, mission. Huh? Well, you know the importance of the first three, and Agraria’s setting is as good as it gets: overlooking the Georgetown waterfront, a prime people-watching perch. But we love this place more for her mission: serving high-quality food sourced through sustainable partnerships with local small agricultural operators. Admittedly, sometimes this commitment to doing right induces eye rolls; having the soft tacos described as an ‘homage to the field workers who plant, tend and harvest our food’ is a bit tacky. But that’s a minor complaint. We’re not going to come down too hard on a restaurant that does its part for local communities,…
reviewed
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Busboys & Poets
Busboys (named for a Langston Hughes poem) has, dare we say, become as much of a keystone of the U St scene as Ben’s Chili Bowl. It’s one of the first places this author takes all newcomers to the city, in the sense that is seems to capture that sense of what DC really is better than almost any one business. So what is DC? Intellectual, multiracial, opinionated, creative, takes itself just a little too seriously (just perhaps), supportive of its local community, but sometimes a bit too obsessed by its own laptop. Everything we’ve just described? Pretty much the daily scene inside B&P, the sort of place where everyone seems to gather for coffee, wi-fi and a progressive…
reviewed
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Oval Room
The Oval Room occupies some pretty prime real estate, sitting in the equidistant center of a Polygon of Power formed by the Hay-Adams Hotel, Army & Navy Club, Eisenhower Building and Decatur House. (We can imagine a Dan Brown character drawing marker lines between all of the above to the Oval, whispering, ‘It all fits !’ But we digress.) You could plop the Oval in bloody Bethesda and it’d still serve standout food, generally of the American-hint-of-Mediterranean genre. This author loves butter and cream, yet he’ll admit the Oval’s eschewing of the above in favor of allowing ingredients to hold their own intensity, such as foie gras with lemon and lavender, or bass laced…
reviewed
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The Heights
They don’t keep on reaching for such great heights at the Heights – they’ve seized them (sorry – Postal Service reference). The food is excellent Americana stuff – the fried chicken and mash potatoes is wonderful, and wasabi-crusted fish is gorgeous, but whatever you do, come on a weekend and order off the greatest Bloody Mary menu on Earth. Select from 10 different types of vodka, or tequila, or gin, then add from a glut of options, including beef broth, clam juice, Old Bay seasoning, lump crabmeat, bacon – well, we could go on. By the way, you can order all of the above together. Of course, then time would stop and the universe would implode upon itself, so …
reviewed
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Zola
A subtle but playful theme of espionage runs through this hip restaurant, named for French author Emile Zola, who championed the case of Alfred Dreyfus when he was falsely accused of being a spy. Located inside the International Spy Museum, it’s only appropriate that guests should be able to monitor the kitchen through discreet one-way mirrors in the booths, or slip off to the restroom through a hidden door. Black-and-white photographs and projections of coded text further add to the mysterious air in the restaurant. In the midst of this secrecy, Zola’s cuisine is pretty straight up. Bleu cheese pasta on local veal is nicely over the top, and a pretty gazpacho is enlivene…
reviewed
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City Zen
James Beard–award-winning chef Eric Zeibold heads the kitchen at one of DC’s most acclaimed restaurants. Zeibold is something of a legend in US culinary circles; he came up in California’s French Laundry (arguably the best restaurant in America, some say the world) and approaches food with what we’d call fierce innovation; this is the kind of guy who mixes red snapper skin with lentils and can make you think a monkfish liver was a slice of perfect foie gras. The tasting menu of most foodies’ sweatiest fantasies is served in a dining room that’s almost blinding in its ritzy opulence. To cut a very fine deal, treat yourself to the $50 bar tasting menu.
reviewed
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Restaurant Eve
While ‘fusion’ may be an overused adjective when it comes to describing restaurants, the best kitchens always fuse. Innovation and tradition, regional and international influences, comfort and class. Eve contains every-thing we have described, a combination of great American ingredients, precise French technique and some of the highest levels of service we’ve encountered in the area. Splurge here and opt for the tasting menus, which are simply on another level of gastronomic experience. This is one of the few vegan-friendly high-end restaurants in the DC metro area; just make sure to call a day ahead and chef-owner Cathal Armstrong’s team will be happy to accommodate you.…
reviewed
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Blue Ridge
We’ll give you a few guesses as to what part of the country the menu at Blue Ridge is sourced from. Give up? Ah, you’re not from around here. Makes sense; you bought the Lonely Planet after all. Well, the food here comes from the Blue Ridge Mountains, which form the western spine of Virginia. This is Americana stuff done up with superb attention to detail, served in a dining room that’s a little too spare to feel as rustic as it wants to be (the waitstaff wear plaid, which comes off as more hipster than the intended country-fried). The mains are lovely, but we especially love the charcuterie and cheese plates, filled with meat and fermented milk sourced from the area.…
reviewed
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Mendocino Grille & Wine Bar
The fusion here is done with just the right light touch, giving Mendocino’s menu the sort of refreshing kick you get out of a cool West Coast breeze. Fish comes floating on nutty jasmine rice, framed by meaty mushrooms, while a chard salad has twists of citric bite and chili heat. For all that, we especially love having wine and cheese nights here; whoever picks the stuff out really knows their fromage, which is as modern and refreshing as the interior decor. To sum Mendocino up: this is very fine contemporary California cuisine, which compliments all the contemporary California SUVs driven by all the nearby contemporary California Georgetown undergrads.
reviewed
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Equinox
Equinox is as mom-and-pop as high-end White House–adjacent dining gets – Todd Gray and wife Ellen Kassoff are the respective chef and manager. The intimacy of the restaurant’s executive staff extends into the menu, which has long eschewed pricey export ingredients in favor of meat, fish, fowl and fruit sourced from the Shenandoah and Chesapeake Bay. That said, while Gray’s ingredients are rooted in the mid-Atlantic, he can cross the pond for cooking inspiration; the duck breast served over black Indian rice is juicy and comforting, the rice pillow soft, and the accompaniment of roasted cherries plucked from the best rural French traditions.
reviewed
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Argonaut
You can get locally sourced organic goodness all around this town, but the setting is often some intimidating chic-spot straight from the Matrix, and the price is usually hovering near the ozone layer. Not at the ‘Naut. It looks and feels like a corner spot where folks repair for a beer after work, and in truth, people still do so here. You should too, but don’t miss the mouthwatering pumpkin ravioli or fries doused in Old Bay seasoning. Hipster enough to be different, but not so much that locals have fled the premises, this is a great date spot for someone who’s a little off-kilter.
reviewed
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Blue Duck Tavern
The Blue Duck tries to create a rustic kitchen ambience in the midst of one of M St’s uber-urbanized concrete corridors. Design-wise, it doesn’t quite work for us; the Amish quilts and hand-crafted wood accents seem to clash with the modernist clean lines and art-gallery interior. Food-wise, the experiment is a smashing success: the menu sources off of farms across the country, bringing diners lovely mains like a pork terrine and trotter croquette made from pigs in Virginia, crab cakes sourced from the waters of Louisiana, and sturgeon caviar plucked from the Columbia River in Washington State.
reviewed
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Minibar at Café Atlantico
Atlantico’s minibar is foodie nirvana, where the curious get wowed by animal bits spun into cotton candy and cocktails frothed into clouds and all the conceptualization of food that says we, as a society, have a lot of time on our hands. The tasting menu is often delicious, and at least original; even if every dish isn’t a winner, it’s hard not to appreciate the innovation involved. There’s a sense of madcap experimentation here, as you expect from the best efforts of head chef Jose Andres, and we’ll happily embrace that delicious lunacy.
reviewed
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Corduroy
Corduroy is a study in understated excellence. From its appearance – so subtle you can miss it while walking past – to a postmodern menu of cleverly deconstructed dishes, this is a restaurant that challenges you to love your food for what it is. We’ll happily oblige, so long as they give us another crack at that lamb loin with the sugar snaps, or the intriguing, surprisingly rich sea-urchin linguine. Chef Tom Power (awesome name, by the way) respects his food, bringing out its best without bending it to any preconceived notions of what tastes right.
reviewed
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Palena
Set a night aside with a loved one or a good friend and get ready for a culinary ride past the limits of taste into innovative gastro-orgasm land. Palena’s menu defies our conventions, deliciously; Swiss chard served in ink ravioli, sturgeon wrapped in pancetta, a guinea hen with pomerol and foie fras, chestnut soup dressed with celery and, yes, octopus (?!). The approach, as you may have sussed out, is often unexpected; the rewards are uniformly delicious. The interior is warm but oddly modern in its crafted rusticity, but to see or eat any of the above, book early.
reviewed
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Monocle
The Monocle’s food – very American surf-and-turf type stuff – is 3.5 stars out of 5. Generally good, occasionally great, sometimes disappointing. But people don’t come here to eat so much as to celebrity spot, and seeing as this good ol’ boys’ club is just behind the Capitol, your chances of seeing Senator Smith aren’t bad. The dark bar and the walls help hit home the fact that this is a politicians’ place first and foremost; note the quotes (‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog’).
reviewed
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Y
Founding Farmers
They serve ‘bacon cocktails’ here. No, really. And they’re awesome, as is the frosty decor of pickled goods in jars overlooking an art gallery of a dining space, a combination of made-from-scratch and modern art that reflects the nature of the food: locally sourced, New American – figs, prosciutto, fried chicken and ricotta ravioli with creamed corn. Our one complaint is the location – the rustic Americana thing isn’t well served by essentially occupying the ground floor of an office building.
reviewed
