Within the The place to Eat: 25 Greatest collection, we’re highlighting our favourite eating places in cities throughout the US. These lists can be up to date as eating places shut and open, and as we discover new gems to advocate. As all the time, we pay for all of our meals and don’t settle for free dishes.
Riverdale Park | Barbecue, Salvadoran
As at any good barbecue restaurant, the odor of wooden smoke publicizes 2Fifty Barbecue earlier than you enter the doorways to the informal eating room. The house owners, Debby Portillo and Fernando González, moved from El Salvador to Maryland with a customized smoker in 2018, promoting plates of barbecue at farmers’ markets earlier than opening this location and one in Washington, D.C., correct. Followers order forward for plates of tangy, South American-inflected Texas barbecue that always sells out earlier than the day is thru. Don’t miss the tender prime brisket, smoky ribs or hen quarters, all with a aspect of craveable macaroni and cheese. It’s an ideal unfold to take to close by Riverdale Park on a pleasant day. KORSHA WILSON
4700 Riverdale Street, Riverdale Park, Md.; 240-764-8763; 2fiftybbq.com
Navy Yard | Mediterranean, Center Jap
Albi, which suggests “coronary heart” in Arabic, is the chef Michael Rafidi’s love letter to the meals of his Palestinian American childhood. The kitchen is dominated by a coal-fire fireplace, which sends aromatic wafts of smoke out to the eating room alongside Mr. Rafidi’s impressed takes on Levantine classics equivalent to hummus (topped with crab and charred ramps), kebabs (skewed morsels of date-glazed duck and foie gras) and grape leaves (full of rockfish, inexperienced tomato and preserved lemon). The fervour of the place can also be on show within the wine listing. Full of traditional gems and deep cuts from all around the world (with explicit emphasis on the Center East), the charming wine listing has sections, like “#Unapologeticallyclassicwhitewines,” and “‘Donnie Darko’ Reds,” that make even the most important wine snobs crack a smile. MELISSA CLARK
1346 Fourth St. SE, Washington, D.C.; 202-921-9592; albidc.com
Petworth | African Diasporic
Constructed round a conceptual, extremely private menu, Almeda has simply 18 seats. If that feels like plenty of eating places in D.C., assume once more. The chef and proprietor Danielle Harris channels the cooking of the African diaspora in a singular, intimate neighborhood restaurant the place you may moderately think about turning into an everyday. Go together with an urge for food to pattern the total menu, together with tostone doubles, shrimp aguachile seasoned with Outdated Bay, jollof risotto and the entire hen, which is smoked, roasted after which fried. They’re dishes you’ll recall when it’s consolation you crave. BRETT ANDERSON
828 Upshur Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; no cellphone; almedarestaurant.com
Mount Vernon Sq. | Thai
If there’s ever a silver lining to a restaurant closing, as 14th Avenue’s beloved Baan Thai did in 2019, it’s the probability that it’d someday return in a more energizing however acquainted type. Enter Baan Siam, a pandemic child now approaching its fourth birthday. Don’t hassle flipping by way of the chef Jeeraporn Poksupthong’s multi-page menu seeking pad kee mao or pad see ew — you received’t discover them right here. As a substitute, revel within the Northern Thai dishes that constructed a following at her outdated Logan Circle spot and are actually popping out of the sprawling kitchen right here. Dishes just like the exemplary khao soi — a curry within the brightest shade of marigold, teeming with fall-of-the-bone hen and topped with a Medusa-esque tangle of fried egg noodles — will hit dwelling with these searching for the putting stability of candy, bitter and fiery flavors that could be a hallmark of Thai cooking. TANYA SICHYNSKY
425 I Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-588-5889; baansiamdc.com
You may add Bostan’s hen and lamb skewers to the listing of nice kebabs on the market: juicy, hot-from-the-coals, heady with cumin. However what makes these kebabs really particular is all the things you order to go together with them, dishes like saozi, supple flat noodles in a tart, red-tinted broth; rangpiza, a chilly noodle dish sparked with chili oil; and the beef-and-onion stuffed flatbread referred to as goshan. The house owners, Mirzat Salam and Zulhayat Omer, began serving conventional Uyghur delicacies on this Arlington, Va., strip-mall after coming to the US in 2019, the place they in the end joined the waves of immigrants fleeing warfare and persecution granted asylum in Northern Virginia over the many years. Bostan is one in all a handful of Uyghur eating places within the space; a second location opened in Herndon late final 12 months. BRETT ANDERSON
3911 Lee Freeway, Arlington, Va.; 703-527-2026; bostanuyghurcuisine.com
14th Avenue Hall| Bistro
Bresca, the chef and proprietor Ryan Ratino’s tribute to Parisian neo-bistros, is the uncommon restaurant the place avant-garde, technique-heavy dishes are approachable and enjoyable. Slices of kanpachi crudo are fanned in a semicircle like a perpetual Tilt-a-Whirl, whereas an amuse bouche that resembles a complete black truffle is definitely a charcoal-dusted gougère full of truffle-scented Mornay sauce. Even the cocktails present up in whimsical vessels just like the Bee’s Knees served in a glass bee adorned with a recent sprig of child’s breath. Diners can order à la carte or from a prix fixe menu — or go all out and splurge on a tasting menu at Jônt, Bresca’s spendy upstairs sibling. KORSHA WILSON
1906 14th Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-518-7926; brescadc.com
Downtown D.C. | Spanish
Rubén García was a longtime prime lieutenant of the Spanish American chef José Andrés, the particular person most chargeable for bringing prime quality tapas and Spanish-influenced molecular gastronomy to the Washington space. Casa Teresa, the primary restaurant Mr. García opened after putting out on his personal final 12 months, raises the bar but once more. The menu is stuffed primarily with conventional Spanish dishes, however they’re handled with a degree of technical proficiency and whimsy not usually afforded pa amb tomàquet, croquetas de jamón or Basque cheesecake. This cooking will make you fall in love with Spanish meals another time. Take time to peruse the wine director Sarah Vanags’s Spanish drinks choice, which focuses on ladies winemakers. BRETT ANDERSON
919 nineteenth Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-856-7979; teresadc.com
Silver Spring | Mid Atlantic
Open since 1945 on Georgia Avenue, Crisfield is a grasp class in no-frills Mid Atlantic dishes like seafood bisque, broiled fish platters and crab desserts with no filler. The inside of the restaurant hasn’t modified a lot over time, however the neighborhood round it has, making a go to really feel like stepping again in time, the place this fashion of eating was the norm for the realm. It’s an ideal vacation spot for a platter of fried seafood with juicy, evenly battered shrimp, scallops and perch. KORSHA WILSON
8012 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, Md; 301-589-1306; fb.com/crisfieldseafoodrestaurant/
Falls Church | New American
Yuan and Carey Tang, the husband and spouse workforce behind Ellie Chicken, lower their tooth working in fine-dining eating places in Washington, D.C., the place they opened their critically acclaimed tasting-menu restaurant Rooster & Owl. Their second undertaking, within the prosperous bed room neighborhood of Falls Church, the place the couple grew up, is decidedly homier. There, they’re proving that suburbanites are as hungry for imaginative cooking as any metropolis denizen. Assume Vietnamese French onion soup with braised oxtail, cacio e pepe crossed with elotes, and fried oyster larb gai. It’s nicely definitely worth the brief journey exterior the District. NIKITA RICHARDSON
125 Founder’s Avenue, Falls Church, Va.; 703-454-8894; elliebirdva.com
H Avenue Hall | Ethiopian
D.C. has lengthy had an abundance of Ethiopian eating places — and everybody has their favourite — however Ethiopic on a bustling part of H Avenue is among the most fashionable examples of simply how a lot Ethiopian delicacies is a key a part of native eating. The house owners Samuel Ergete and Meseret Bekele opened the shiny eating room in 2010 and it has since develop into a staple within the space, a spot to fulfill buddies for a meal of classics like doro wat, tibs and timatim salad on springy, tangy injera bread, alongside glasses of honey wine. KORSHA WILSON
401 H Avenue NE, Washington D.C.; 202-675-2066; ethiopicrestaurant.com
Rockville | Filipino
Kuya Ja’s specialty is in its identify: pork stomach that condenses the attraction of Filipino-style entire roast pig right into a rolled roast redolent of lemongrass and garlic, with pores and skin too crisp to interrupt with only one whack of your fork. The pork stomach is obtainable with atchara (principally spicy Filipino papaya kraut, should you’re unfamiliar) in a sandwich, on a mattress of rice or together with one other of the co-owner and chef Javier Fernandez’s meats, which you shouldn’t ignore. The lechon could also be what first introduced crowds to Kuya Ja’s, however there are loads extra causes to trek to this fast-casual strip mall storefront in suburban Maryland, together with desserts from Gwenie’s Pastries, run by Stella Fernandez, Mr. Fernandez’s sister. BRETT ANDERSON
5268-H Nicholson Lane, Rockville, Md.; 240-669-4383; kuyajas.com
Adams Morgan | Afghan
This homey Afghan restaurant is greater than only a excellent place to eat tender beef kofta stewed with root greens and flatbreads full of onions and leeks spiked with cilantro, it’s additionally a style of dwelling for the chef Shamim Popal. Ms. Popal fled Afghanistan and got here to Washington, D.C., in 1987. Right here, she is making the dishes she remembers from her upbringing. The Popal household additionally function the wonderful Lutèce in Georgetown and the brand new Pascual on Capitol Hill, however Lapis looks like their household dwelling. KORSHA WILSON
1847 Columbia Street NW, Washington D.C.; 202-299-9630; lapisdc.com
H Avenue Hall | Cambodian, Taiwanese
Getting into the modern area at Maketto presents a little bit of a choose-your-own-adventure: the eating can function an all-day cafe, an important choice for group dinners or enterprise lunches, and single diners typically even open their laptops to work whereas having fun with a espresso. On heat evenings, the again patio looks like a cocktail party. The menu presents scrumptious and shocking mash-ups of Cambodian and Taiwanese cuisines like Gruyère dumplings with hearty Chinese language chili, wok-charred lo mein noodles with roasted pork and satisfying baos. KORSHA WILSON
1351 H Avenue NE, Washington, D.C.; 202-838-9972; maketto1351.com
Fairfax | Chinese language
Peter Chang is among the area’s most celebrated chef-restaurateurs. Mama Chang is a testomony to the truth that he didn’t obtain this standing alone. The menu pays tribute to Mr. Chang’s foremost sources of help and inspiration: Ronger Wang, his mom, and Lisa Chang, his spouse and enterprise companion, who can also be an completed chef. Since opening in 2019, the restaurant has launched dishes, many impressed by the house cooking of Mr. Chang’s native Hubei province, which have gone onto the menus on the Chang household’s 16 different eating places within the space. Standouts embrace fish ball and lamb soup, lychee pepper hen and a stew stuffed with candy potato noodles, bitter cabbage and pork. Consuming this dazzling meals at this elegant Northern Virginia restaurant, lined with comfy cubicles and blond wooden surfaces, looks like an event. BRETT ANDERSON
3251 Blenheim Boulevard, Suite 101, Fairfax, Va.; 703-268-5556; mamachangva.com
Shaw | Latin American, Vegan, Tasting Menu
In Mita’s hushed, gray-hued eating room, warmly accented in tonal browns, the Latin American, vegetable-based delicacies of Miguel Guerra and Tatiana Mora arrives in neon bursts, with daring flavors to match. Orbs of vibrant watermelon type a jewel-toned mosaic with fermented carrots and cilantro; marinated orange-fleshed squash and a ruffle of crispy kale are liberally however rigorously drizzled with pungent mole. For dessert, a cherry blossom-themed confection in dazzling pink jubilantly mixes rhubarb with strawberry and yuzu. If you happen to’re vegan-curious and even vegan-resistant, Mita’s tasting menu will win you over. That is plant-based delicacies in fireworks mode: playful, incandescent and immediately interesting. MELISSA CLARK
804 V Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-929-7792; mitadc.com
Shaw | Tasting Menu
Many eating places take sustainability severely, however few are as rigorous as Oyster Oyster. The chef Rob Rubba’s ever-changing, hyperlocal tasting menu celebrates each fungi and bivalves, exemplars of sustainable foodways that in his arms are additionally totally scrumptious. Mushrooms play the larger position, whether or not roasted and topped with verdant spring onions or simmered in a dusky, woodsy stew thickened with potatoes. Oysters, which get a cross on an in any other case plant-based menu since their cultivation is useful to the ocean, typically seem coyly, hidden underneath gossamer sheets of radish with herb oil, and different instances overtly, layered with watermelon and crunchy peanuts. Even the candle holders are crafted from recuperated oyster shells, and no matter is left in your water glass goes to grateful vegetation, like a tip for nature itself. MELISSA CLARK
1440 Eighth Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; no cellphone; oysteroysterdc.com
Capitol Hill | New American, World, Tasting Menu
You would possibly groan on the e mail reminding you that there’s no gown code however “most individuals gown fancy” just a few days earlier than your reservation at Pineapple & Pearls. However upon coming into the velvety, chandeliered eating room, you perceive that the foundations aren’t to dampen the enjoyable, however to reinforce it. When you’re seated, the night is a celebratory, all-out affair the place caviar flows freely and a parade of dishes combine and match influences from all around the globe. French bouillabaisse meets Brazilian moqueca in a course that includes lobster and a wealthy fish broth. A pasta course impressed by Cheez-Its is deliciously punchy (severely), and a sundae dessert course comes with caviar and gummy bears organized like multicolored troopers. It’s dizzying and enjoyable, and like several good occasion, ends with a parting present: a Wagyu cheeseburger to assist nurse your hangover. KORSHA WILSON
715 Eighth Avenue SE, Washington, D.C.; 202-595-7375; pineappleandpearls.com
Rockville, Md. | Salvadoran
Salvadoran meals is tightly knit into the material of the native tradition. Elsy Claros — whose mom, Emilia Cruz Lopez, ran a pupuseria in El Salvador — performed a task in spreading the delicacies throughout the metro space, with the pupuserias she opened along with her sisters. Mamá Emilia ups the ante. Ms. Claros opened the restaurant with the assistance of her daughter, Ericka, in 2022. There are conventional pupusas, oozing cheese, frijoles and chicharrón. However there are additionally pupusas with fillings that embrace shrimp, mint and kale. There are practically 30 completely different kinds, all served sizzling and freshly blistered, beginning at breakfast, if you’d be nicely served ordering the signature merchandise with eggs, in a purple sauce that rivals the perfect enchilada gravy. BRETT ANDERSON
785 Rockville Pike, Suite H, Rockville, Md. 20852; 301-605-7063; fb.com/PupuseriaMamaEmilia/
Penn Quarter and West Finish | Indian
Loads of eating places are worse for put on after practically twenty years in enterprise, however Rasika, chef Vikram Sunderam’s, game-changing, fine-dining Indian restaurant that opened in 2005, nonetheless purrs with a full eating room most nights. Devotees of Mr. Sunderam’s cooking go to the West Finish location or the unique in Penn Quarter close to the Nationwide Mall for crispy fried spinach with candy yogurt within the palak chaat or the buttery black cod (that are each traditional D.C. dishes at this level), however the collection of naans and meat dishes just like the chile-heavy lamb roganjosh are additionally spectacular. KORSHA WILSON
633 D Avenue NW; 202-637-1222; and 1190 New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-466-2500; rasikarestaurant.com
Adams Morgan| Italian American
Maybe you might be a kind of individuals who believes an city neighborhood is incomplete and not using a up to date Italian American trattoria the place the meals is phenomenal however the setting and costs (a minimum of by present big-city requirements) make it appropriate for all events. Reveler’s Hour serves this position in Adams Morgan. The continuously altering menu is stuffed with pleasantly acquainted, subtly erudite dishes. There’s a Caesar salad, although it might be made with escarole or kohlrabi, and should you go hungry for hen, hope that it’s fried and drizzled with saffron sizzling honey. The ricotta cavatelli Bolognese arrives with a wholesome shaving of two-year aged Parmesan, whereas the caramelized onion-Gruyère arancini is accompanied with the sensible suggestion to pair it with amontillado sherry. That is meals worthy of admiration, however humble sufficient to recede into the background of an evening to recollect. BRETT ANDERSON
1775 Columbia Street NW, Washington, D.C.; no cellphone; revelershour.com
U Avenue | Fashionable Caribbean
Close to the nightlife of the U Avenue hall, this stylish restaurant is proof of a youthful, newer D.C. eating crowd that wishes easygoing and scrumptious. The menu performs the hits of Trinidadian delicacies with dishes like tender roti, dense cassava dumplings, spiced aloo and chaat pies with barely candy fried bread, but in addition presents fashionable takes on Caribbean components like the fragile and evergreen-colored callaloo soup garnished with lump crab meat. The ambiance is enjoyable and repair is pleasant making it an important spot to get pleasure from glad hour or an informal dinner. KORSHA WILSON
2017 14th Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-695-8620; stjames-dc.com
Shaw | Mid Atlantic, Tasting Menu
Mid Atlantic delicacies sits on the intersection of the North and South, drawing on components from the Chesapeake Bay and recipes created alongside its huge watershed. Jeremiah Langhorne, the chef and co-owner of the Dabney, provides this regional fashion of cooking the tasting menu therapy. The outcomes — pork crépinette in a mustard inexperienced casing, bluefin tartar wrapped in nasturtium leaves, aged tilefish served in a hail of pumpernickel crumbs and benne seeds — are playfully artistic, however earthier of their attraction than what’s discovered at different high-priced choices permeating D.C. It’s additionally laborious to not be entranced on this transporting eating room within the Blagden Alley historic district, dominated by the open kitchen’s blazing fireplace. BRETT ANDERSON
122 Blagden Alley NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-240-2660; thedabney.com
Capitol Hill | New American
Opened in 2020, the Duck and the Peach’s sparse eating room within the shadow of Jap Market calls consideration to the star of the present (and the menu): a big, spinning rotisserie that looms within the open kitchen. The proprietor, Hollis Wells Silverman, and the chef, Katarina Petonito, serve glorious dishes utilizing seasonal native produce, turning it into easy dishes with California influences. Tilefish is roasted and served with asparagus and a cream sauce, lemon risotto is topped with grilled native child onions and the namesake dish, the rotisserie duck is showered with dressed native greens. It’s a contemporary tackle Mid Atlantic delicacies that exhibits how a lot the area has to supply past its storied seafood. KORSHA WILSON
300 Seventh Avenue SE, Washington, D.C.; 202-431-1913; duckandpeachdc.com
Columbia Heights | Laotian
Seng Luangrath spurred a D.C. renaissance within the natural, funky, usually spicy cooking of her native Laos when she opened Thip Khao in 2014. The stylishly informal cafe struck a chord with dishes like nam khao, a crispy coconut-rice salad with fermented pork, the marginally candy beef jerky referred to as sin, and purple goat curry well-known for its furnace-blast warmth. The cocktails, which additionally draw on Laotian components, are alone price a go to, however they’re additionally neatly designed to enhance the meals. Ms. Luangrath has opened plenty of well-liked Lao eating places within the metro space, together with two places of Padaek in Northern Virginia, each price searching for out. BRETT ANDERSON
3462 14th Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-387-5426; thipkhao.com
The crust of Z&Z’s traditional manoushe, lined in a forest inexperienced slick of olive oil and za’atar, is each tantalizingly chewy and totally crisp, from the sting to the tip of every triangle-cut slice. If the standard and complexity brings to thoughts artisan pizza, you’re not alone. Whereas the house owners, Danny and Johnny Dubbaneh, are fast to level out Levantine flatbreads predate pizza, the brothers’ family-run enterprise does function a little bit like a pizzeria, with the various variations on its signature merchandise — don’t miss the manoushe topped with tomatoes, cucumbers and toum — ordered to-go in cardboard takeout containers. The comfortable, four-table bakery is a step up from Z&Z’s farmers’ market beginnings, nevertheless it nonetheless belies the regional demand the Dubbanehs have helped to create for manoushe, with Z&Z merchandise now out there in grocery shops throughout the Mid Atlantic. BRETT ANDERSON
1111 Nelson Avenue, Rockville, Md., 301-296-4178; zandzdc.com
