{"id":5153,"date":"2025-02-21T10:25:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T02:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=5153"},"modified":"2025-02-21T10:25:38","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T02:25:38","slug":"dining-in-dc-notes-from-a-week-in-the-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2025\/02\/dining-in-dc-notes-from-a-week-in-the-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Dining in DC: Notes from a Week in the Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some months ago, my cousin Adriana mentioned that she’d be visiting New York and Washington DC for her family’s annual vacation this year. Mike and I had been in New York earlier that year, but I thought that a visit to Washington DC might be warranted. I hadn’t been there since my oldest was a baby, and I enjoy spending time with Adriana a lot – she is one of the most positive people I know.

Dining out and exploring local cuisines is one of the great pleasures of traveling, but unlike New York and New Orleans, there isn’t actually a Washingtonian cuisine. People come to Washington from all over the country and the world, so there are all sorts of restaurants and I think competition and fat expense accounts do make this a foodie town, but there is nothing particularly unique about the cuisine. Thus, rather than try to hit specific cultural culinary experiences as we did in the other two cities, we just went for what was convenient and well reviewed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We got to DC at the tail end of winter restaurant<\/a> week, so for our first two meals we got to enjoy restaurants that might otherwise have been out of budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We had an exciting dinner at Imperfecto<\/strong><\/a> in Foggy Bottom
And a nice brunch at Balos Estiatorio<\/strong><\/a> in Dupont Circle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also in Foggy Bottom<\/strong>, we got take out twice from Charm Thai<\/strong><\/a> and had a nice Italian dinner at Matera<\/strong><\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There aren’t too many choices near the National Mall<\/strong> but we had a very tasty lunch at Sweet Home Caf\u00e9<\/strong><\/a> in the African American History and Culture Museum, a much more common place one at Ocean Terrace Caf\u00e9<\/strong><\/a> at the Natura History Museum and a funnel cake at Refreshment Kiosk @ The National Mall<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After visiting the outside of the White House<\/strong>, we had a wonderful lunch at The Hamilton<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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And while visiting the Capitol<\/strong>, we had breakfast at the Capitol Cafe<\/strong><\/a> and an unforgettable lunch with my favorite Congressmember at the The Members Dining Room Restaurant<\/strong><\/a>. We also got snacks while enjoying Live! at the Library of Congress<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we convinced Adriana to try Ethiopian food and had a great meal at Ethiopic<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then left DC for Virginia<\/strong> and had lunch at Brookside Restaurant<\/strong><\/a> in Luray<\/strong> after visiting Shenandoah National Park.

We finished our trip visiting my friend Lavinia and enjoyed several great meals with her. We had wonderful Indian food at Curry Mantra<\/strong><\/a> in Fairfax<\/strong> and amazing Ethiopian, plus a cultural experience to boot, in JD Bar & Restaurant<\/strong><\/a> in Annandale<\/strong>. Finally, our last day, we started with a comforting breakfast at The Original Pancake House<\/strong><\/a> in Falls Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As great as the food was, the best part of the trip was seeing Adriana and her family, Lavinia and hers and my favorite Congressman!. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some months ago, my cousin Adriana mentioned that she’d be visiting New York and Washington DC for her family’s annual vacation this year. Mike and I had been in New York earlier that year, but I thought that a visit to Washington DC might be warranted. I hadn’t been there since my oldest was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[589],"tags":[689,695,693,688],"class_list":["post-5153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-destinations","tag-adriana","tag-lavinia","tag-virginia","tag-washington-dc","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}