District

Cedar (822 E St., NW; 202-637-0012). The team behind such DC bars as the Front Page, the Bottom Line, and the Madhatter comes to Penn Quarter with an upscale restaurant and a hyper-seasonal menu by Andrew Kitko, formerly of Bethesda’s Redwood.

Eatonville (2121 14th St., NW; 202-332-9672). Andy Shallal, owner of Busboys and Poets across the street, named this homage to Zora Neale Hurston after the novelist’s hometown in Florida. Chef Russell Holman’s Southern menu includes gumbo, po’ boys, and shrimp-and-crawfish étouffée.

H Street Country Club (1335 H St., NE; 202-399-4722). Impresario Joe Englert adds to his Atlas District dominance with this two-level bar/restaurant he co-owns. It offers a nine-hole mini-golf course upstairs and a Tex-Mex menu—developed by Ann Cashion, owner of Taqueria Nacional—downstairs.

Italian Pizza Kitchen (1110 U St., NW; 202-387-4992). The second location of this Italian catchall has added three kinds of wings, cheese-garlic bread, and calzones to its menu to please the late-night crowd—it’s open until 3 am Friday and Saturday night.

Maryland

Angeethi (7904 Woodmont Ave., Bethesda; 240-395-1014). At the third outpost of his value-driven Indian chain, owner Sanjeev Verma is offering his buffet—at both lunch and dinner—with a Mongolian-style twist: a chef who custom-creates curries for each customer’s taste.

Hell Point Seafood (12 Dock St., Annapolis; 410-990-9888). This casual spinoff of Bob Kinkead’s eponymous Foggy Bottom restaurant sits on prime real estate overlooking the city dock in downtown Annapolis. Count on fried clams, crabcakes, and lobster rolls.

Public House (199 Fleet St., National Harbor; 240-493-6120). This bar/restaurant/lounge in the growing National Harbor complex has American food from all over the country: Baja fish tacos, barbecue pulled pork, and, of course, Maryland crabcakes.

Virginia

Bayou Bakery (3211 Wilson Blvd., Arlington; 703-276-1010). Murky Coffee and its hipster following moved to DC, and pastry chef David Guas, formerly of Acadiana, has taken over the space, partnering with the Liberty Tavern’s owners to serve the sweets of his native New Orleans, including pecan pralines, snowballs, and house-made pies.

Cupcakes Actually (11944 Grand Commons Ave., Fairfax; 571-522-6315). Detroit-bred sisters Sue Woodhouse and Jennifer Neiman recruited a cook with experience at California’s French Laundry to fine-tune their 25 cupcake recipes, three of which are topped with chocolate-dipped buttercream frosting.

Kora (2250-B Crystal Dr., Arlington; 571-431-7090). Ivory Coast natives and brothers Morou and Amadou Ouattara are keeping the Italian/Mediterranean theme at Roberto Donna’s vacated Bebo Trattoria—a departure from the Modern American cuisine Morou excelled in at the now-shuttered Farrah Olivia.

This appeared in the July, 2009 issue of The Washingtonian.