About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
2Fifty. 414 K St., NW.
If you’re a Washingtonian who’s serious about barbecue, Riverdale Park probably means something to you. No matter how far you live from the Prince George’s County suburb, you’ve probably made the trek to 2Fifty Texas BBQ. That’s where Salvadoran couple Fernando González and Debby Portillo González are creating the region’s best Texas-style barbecue. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been getting constant requests to bring 2Fifty to a more central location.
“We’ve been getting messages and feedback from customers that it’s a hike for them to get from Virginia, for example, or the city, to Riverdale Park,” general manager Portillo González says. (2Fifty previously had a stall at Union Market, but the menu was limited.)
Now, the DC outpost the Gonzálezes announced over the summer is finally a reality: 2Fifty’s Mount Vernon Triangle location opens on Saturday, January 13. Occupying a ground floor space in a glassy K Street condo building, it’s a far cry from the suburb feel of the Riverdale Park smokehouse.The new 2Fifty is also a level up in terms of amenities. While the original location can sometimes feel like a cramped general store, emulating the Texas barbecue shacks that inspired it, the new location is a standard downtown restaurant space with more than twice as many seats: 85, compared to the original’s 40.
The González family had struggled to find a DC landlord who would tolerate smokers; in the end, they opted to continue smoking their meat in Riverdale Park, ordering more smokers from Texas to allow their Maryland space to double as a commissary smokehouse for the DC location. The K Street location has a much larger kitchen for making sides, and ultimately, Portillo González says they hope to install a serious ventilation system that will allow them to cook the meat there too.
The menu will be largely the same at 2Fifty’s new location— wagyu brisket, pulled pork, brisket beans, fried plantains, and various rotating specials. It will charge by weight for the meat and operate until sold out, like many traditional barbecue joints. As a result, phone and online ordering won’t be available, an unusual move in downtown DC.
The DC outpost is a milestone for 2Fifty, which began as pitmaster Fernando González’s catering business in San Salvador, where employees of the US Embassy became his most loyal customers. He and Portillo González immigrated in 2018 and opened their Maryland restaurant just as the pandemic descended on the US. Though González is a purist when it comes to traditional Hill Country brisket, he and Portillo González also asserted their Salvadoran roots with items like fried plantains, tajín green beans, and specials like chicharron and smoked brisket pupusas.
