About Ghibellina
The secret is out about this darkly minimalist restaurant’s happy hour, which lasts from 4 to 6:30 weekdays and starts at 3 on weekends. It’s not limited to booze: You can dig into the kitchen’s terrific thin-crust pies at a deep discount. Perhaps because of this, Ghibellina’s dining room is comparatively under the radar. That’s your gain on busy 14th Street nights or anytime you have a hankering for simple, olive-oil-and-herb-heavy Italian fare. Grilled meats come out particularly well, and the half chicken—cooked under a brick until its skin is extra-crispy—is worth a visit all by itself.
Don’t miss: Arugula salad; cheese and salumi boards; sweet-potato gnocchi with goat cheese; lamb-blade steak; Clam pizza; sausage-and-provolone pizza.
See what other restaurants made our 100 Very Best Restaurants list. This article appears in our February 2016 issue of Washingtonian.
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
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.
