Parlour Victoria, an American seafood tavern housed in a Victorian Era row home, opens on Wednesday, February 15. The two-story restaurant and bar in DC’s Mount Vernon Triangle neighborhood will serve lunch and dinner (weekend brunch is coming in March). Upstairs, a whiskey bar offers over 100 brown spirits and nightly live acoustic music.
Chef Brandon Sumblin, a four-time winner on Food Network competition show Guy’s Grocery Games helms the kitchen. The southern Virginia native puts his touch on the menu with dishes like truffled deviled eggs, gumbo, lobster-laced grits with seared scallops, and a brunch-time sweet-potato waffle with fried chicken. The chef joins the Atlas Restaurant Group—which operates 25 hospitality venues around Baltimore—from downtown DC’s St. Regis hotel. Parlour’s all-day lineup takes cues from Loch Bar, Atlas’s upscale oyster house in the Four Seasons Baltimore, casting a wide net with soups, salads, and lobster rolls joining splurges like shellfish towers, caviar service, and wagyu steaks.
Parlour Victoria is the first DC venture for Atlas. The restaurant has been over three years in the making, due to pandemic delays and the renovation of a historic building adjoining Marriott’s Moxy hotel. During the time the project was stalled, Atlas came under fire in Baltimore for enforcing dress codes that were deemed racist. In 2020, it faced a discrimination lawsuit after a Black woman and her nine-year old son were denied entry into high-end Mediterranean restaurant Ouzo Bay for the child’s athletic shorts (footage from the incident showed a similarly dressed white child dining there). A judge has since moved to dismiss the lawsuit, while Atlas apologized and removed or amended its dress codes in the wake of pressure from the Baltimore City Council.
Though dress codes in various forms are on the rise around DC as pandemic-bound diners venture out, Parlour Victoria will not have one after all.
Parlour Victoria—which takes its name from some of the last inhabitants of the 19th century mansion, Victoria Burr and novelist William Burr—is just the start for Atlas. The 240-seat restaurant will add a 100-person patio in the spring. In March, Atlas plans to open Lucha Rose, a Mexican-themed rooftop bar at the millennial-focused Moxy. The indoor/outdoor bar will serve tequila and mezcal drinks alongside ceviches, crudos, and tacos, and a DJ will spin on weekends. Atlas CEO Alex Smith says additional projects are “very possible in DC—it’s just a matter of time.”
Parlour Victoria. 1011 K St., 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.
