Chef Rob Weland will close Garrison on Capitol Hill after dinner service on Saturday.
The locavore restaurant was one of the best on Barracks Row for its four-plus years. Weland says he’s considering a different location for his lone venture and blames a number of factors for a drop in business over the past year.
“We had a wonderful go at it the first three years, and we did very well. I’m not sure if it’s the political climate or where we’re at right now as a city. There are so many restaurants,” says Weland. “We just felt it wasn’t performing as well.”
He says he felt a change in the neighborhood over the past year, partially due the political climate of the Trump administration.
“I could be wrong. I certainly felt it,” Weland says of the shift. “It was a wonderful, vibrant community. We had two Supreme Court justices come in [the restaurant]. It just felt different.”
Weland, who was the former head chef at Cork and Poste Moderne Brasserie (now closed) before striking out on his own, says he’ll take some time to regroup before looking at new spaces or getting back in the kitchen.
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.
