The Donovan House, the sleek boutique hotel on DC’s Thomas Circle, hasn’t had the easiest go of things in the dining department. Originally, its in-house restaurant was to be a Todd English-helmed modern-Asian place called Cha. A few months ago, after repeatedly delayed openings, English pulled out of the project and in came Susur Lee, the chef behind Shang in the Thompson Hotel, the Donovan’s sister property in Manhattan. The candlelit restaurant and lounge—now called Zentan (1155 14th St. NW; 202-737-1200 [ask for the restaurant extension])—opened Monday. The menu offers small plates, sushi, and pan-Asian entrées, including a few hits from Shang such as five-spice slaw and quick-sauté wild garlic shrimp.
Read on for a look at the dining room and lounge plus the dinner menu.
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Judging by the already-bustling dining room at Eatonville, you can’t have too much of a good thing. So what if Busboys and Poets is right across the street? There are apparently enough gorgeous urban hipsters to populate them both.
The restaurateur behind the two hangouts, Andy Shallal, named and fashioned Busboys and Poets as an homage to poet and writer Langston Hughes. Eatonville, his latest venture, is a love song to Zora Neale Hurston, another Harlem Renaissance writer with DC ties (she attended Howard University). Hurston hailed from Eatonville, Florida, the country’s first incorporated African-American township.
Potenza Bakery, next to the restaurant of the same name, serves homemade gelato and fresh breads. Photograph by Freddie Lieberman.
When it comes to bakeries, we can count on one hand—scratch that, two fingers—the number of places where we’d go for a fresh baguette. We can only imagine what the ambassadors and expats from France, where bakeries outnumber berets, must think of this town.
In fact, a successful combination of flour and water (including bagels and pizza crust) seems to have stumped all but a handful Washington bakers. It’s a void that Stir Food Group, which includes Zola and Zola Wine & Kitchen, is looking to fill with its Potenza bakery, a tidy shop adjacent to its new Italian restaurant with the same name.
It has the trappings of a charming European corner bake shop: a white-tiled floor, granite countertops, and an open baking area where customers can watch floppy-toque-topped cooks at work. The 12 wrought-iron seats could pass for chairs at an al fresco Parisian cafe.
Andy Shallal has a new literary-themed restaurant just next door to Busboys and Poets, his popular U Street hangout. Eatonville (2121 14th St., NW; 202-332-9672) is inspired by author Zora Neale Hurston and named after her Florida hometown. We asked diners exiting the restaurant to weigh in on the Southern comfort food and colorful murals.
Restaurateurs Eli Hengst and Jared Rager, the duo behind Sonoma in Capitol Hill, have a new venture in the works. They’ve tapped chef and sustainable-seafood advocate Barton Seaver to oversee Blue Ridge, which will take over the Busara space in Glover Park (2340 Wisconsin Ave., NW). The restaurant, which draws inspiration from the Virginia Piedmont and its namesake mountains, is designed to look like a turn-of-the-century Shaker farmhouse with Amish quilts, reclaimed church pews, and communal tables from DC’s Eastern Market. Outdoors, you’ll find a wooden deck and dining area around a pond and Oriental garden. Echoing the interior, the outside space is decorated with rustic harbor sconces and big communal tables.
From a tiki-lounge-like spot for pho to a downtown gelato stop, we've got the goods on the restaurants people are talking about.
Photograph by Chris Leaman
Downtown DC gets a branch of the chocolate chain Schakolad, which serves gelato, filled chocolates, and fudge.
District
DC Noodles (1412 U St., NW; 202-232-8424). The owners of Logan Circle’s Rice have transformed what was the Simply Home restaurant/shop into a 52-seater whose menu has as many permutations of noodles as Bubba Gump’s company does of shrimp.
Kitchen (2404 Wisconsin Ave., NW; 202-333-3877). Once an Austin Grill, then a Peruvian lounge, it’s now part Southern comfort—chicken-fried steak—and part pub grub: There are 25-cent wings during Monday’s happy hour.
Pho 14Vietnamese Restaurant (1436 Park Rd., NW; 202-986-2326). With a tiki-lounge-like bar, this mom-and-pop joint bids to give DC its first authentic taste of the famed Vietnamese noodle soup, pho.
Qualia (3917 Georgia Ave., NW; 202-248-6423). Joel Finkelstein has been roasting coffee beans out of his house for two years. Now he has converted his hobby into a coffeehouse serving, among other things, pitchers of coffee—enough for four.
Schakolad (1107 19th St., NW; 202-457-8888). Six flavors of gelato accompany a sweeping selection of chocolates, all made in-store using recipes that cofounder Baruch Schaked learned in the 1960s.
Black chandeliers and a baroque-patterned carpet dress up Eventide.
A month after it opened, Eventide posted this on its Web site: “We strictly adhere to the occupancy limit set forth by Arlington County, so that frankly, we aren’t another spot in Clarendon that packs people into the bar like sheep!”
The crowds are flocking to the three-level restaurant for atmosphere that pairs rustic terra-cotta walls with black-crystal-studded chandeliers, floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes, and a baroque-patterned carpet. It’s romantic and hip without being trendy.
The trimmings might lead you to think the food will be as expensive as the vaulted ceilings are high. But in a neighborhood of twenty- and thirtysomethings, many of whom count dollars as diligently as they count calories, value matters—and chef Miles Vaden has constructed his menu accordingly.
A delicate veal-sweetbread appetizer and a rich chestnut soup, highlights of a recent meal, are both $9. A smoky twist on bouillabaisse—built around pan-seared cobia—is $22, while a tangy citrus panna cotta adds only $6 to the tab.
Tons of Fourth of July parties, fireworks, pool parties galore, a pig roast, the closing of the Folklife Festival and Artomatic, and lots more in this jam-packed weekend guide.
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Though Ann Limpert graduated from Connecticut College with a degree in art history and creative writing, she spent most of her time in New England debating the merits of warm, buttery lobster rolls vs. cold, mayo-y ones. She spent two years covering the internet for Entertainment Weekly magazine (highlights include interviewing the Beastie Boys and dancing to "Livin' la Vida Loca" with Penn Jillette), then left to hone her kitchen skills at the Institute of Culinary Education. She has worked as a cook at several New York restaurants, researched and edited cookbooks, and now writes about food and restaurants for the Washingtonian.
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Kate Nerenberg
Kate Nerenberg started as an editorial intern at The Washingtonian in January 2008 and became an assistant editor in September 2008. A native of West Hartford, Connecticut, she spent the first half of her writing life as a sports reporter, and was the editor of the athletics section for the newspaper and student-run magazine while at Middlebury College. A joint Spanish and Art History major, Kate graduated in 2005 and took off on a year-long journey around the world. After tasting everything from fried crickets to lavish Turkish breakfasts, she realized she wanted to devote herself to writing about food, a lifelong passion. She lives with three roommates just east of Logan Circle in a house that's often filled with the smell of sauteed garlic, warm banana bread, or fried bacon and eggs.
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Rina Rapuano
Rina Rapuano's English degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond put her on the path to becoming a managing editor of a weekly business magazine; a freelance copy editor; and assistant managing news editor—and later the lifestyles editor—at a weekly paper in Maryland. But she realized her true calling when her descriptions of meals to friends and colleagues always seemed to end with the same statement: “You're making me hungry.” Frankly, it was making Rina hungry, too. She chucked her day job in 2006 to become a full-time freelance writer focusing mainly on food, and now works as assistant food and wine editor at The Washingtonian.
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