You have tons of great options to choose from when it comes to eating and drinking this weekend. Here are our top picks for a new bar, restaurant, brunch, and fun event.
The Event: Shucktoberfest. All-you-can-drink beer and all-you-can-eat local oysters and on a beautiful Sunday at Union Market? Sign us up. Blue Point Brewing Company supplies the brews and boozy beer-tails, while Rappahannock Oyster Co. shucks the Virginia shellfish (more eats include chowder and fries). Fun-tivities include a football viewing lounge for the Redskins vs. Lions game, and live bluegrass and lawn games. The $75 tickets are all-inclusive for four filling hours, noon to 4.
The New Bar: Owen’s Ordinary (11820 Trade St. North, Bethesda). Beer-master Greg Engert and the Neighborhood Restaurant Group (Churchkey) bring their sudsy talents to North Bethesda’s Pike & Rose development with a voluminous tavern and beer garden. This place is a no-brainer for beer nerds. Many of the 200-plus craft brews have rarely been seen in MoCo before (thanks to notorious liquor laws), not to mention never-before-released options from NRG’s Navy Yard brewery, Bluejacket.
The New Restaurant: Johnny’s Half Shell (1819 Columbia Rd., NW). Veteran DC chef Ann Cashion and business partner John Fulchino officially debut their Mid-Atlantic/Gulf seafood spot this Thursday after soft-opening (interesting story: it’s housed in the Adams Morgan space where they first opened Cashion’s Eat Place in 1995). So far we’ve loved everything to do with crab: the textbook-perfect cake, ultra-rich imperial, and deep-fried “Sartins style” hard-shells with plenty of napkins and butter for dipping.
The New Brunch: Bangkok street brunch at Beau Thai Shaw (1550 Seventh St., NW). Try Thai street eats like spicy grilled pork skewers, coconut-green onion balls, crispy doughnuts, and more during this grazing-friendly brunch. The new offering just launched on Saturdays and Sundays, 11 am to 4 pm.
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.
