Lobster dumplings. Szechuan-style quail. Wonton soup served table-side. These are just a few of the new dishes you’ll find at The Source by Wolfgang Puck, which just reopened after a month-long closure. Both the first-floor lounge and upstairs dining room have been remodeled—the first refresher for the window-walled restaurant adjoining the Newseum since opening in 2007.
A hot pot tasting menu is one of the highlights of chef Scott Drewno’s revamped dinner menu. Parties of four can reserve a special table, custom-designed by local woodworker Art Drauglis for the shareable meal. A cauldron of aromatic broth sits at the center—a 20-hour process involving brewed pork ribs and chicken feet, Szechuan peppercorns and chilies—in which guests dunk a progressive selection of meats like Wagyu beef and meatballs, rockfish and shrimp. A selection of “enhancers” such as house-made chili paste are served alongside.
In addition to the tasting, a number of the a la carte dishes are interactive. Soups are poured from a table-side cart, while two can gather over a dim sum platter or whole Pennsylvania duckling. Guests tuck slices of roasted breast into steamed buns with cucumber and garlic-hoisin sauce, sip duck bone broth with duck wontons, and feast on the wok-fired legs and thighs glazed in chili-black bean sauce.
More casual dining is offered at lunch, where guests can opt for a selection of dumplings and sushi rolls. In the evenings the downstairs lounge is the place to graze from the District Chinese Kitchen menu, filled with bao buns and potstickers, brisket-fried rice with bone marrow and crispy moo-shu pork sandwiches. Newly-appointed head barman Jesse Raines, formerly of Founding Farmers, is planning a new cocktail menu for October.
Certain things haven’t changed, such as a generous happy hour in the lounge offered Monday through Friday, 4 to 7, where any three dishes from the menu go for $27, and cocktails are half-off. A new Monday special is offered in the lounge, where all dumplings go for $5 throughout the night.
The Source. 575 Pennsylvania Ave., NW.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
