Here’s What Washingtonian’s Top Dining Spots Are Doing for Winter Restaurant Week 2024

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s Winter Restaurant Week is almost here—it runs  Monday, January 15 through Sunday, January  21—and nearly two dozen dining spots from Washingtonian‘s 100 Very Best Restaurants list are taking part..Restaurant Week has a newly added $65 dinner option, and depending on the restaurant’s normal pricing, that can still be a relative bargain. But you can also find $40 and $55 dinners and $25 and $35  lunch and brunch deals. Here’s where to get started.

All Purpose

At these two pizza shops, the $40 dinner menu lets you pair a top-notch Jersey-style pie with a starter like the zesty house salad, crispy fried mozzarella, or arancini. For dessert, choose a nutella brownie or rainbow cake. The Navy Yard and Shaw locations have slightly different menus.

Bar Spero

The Basque-inspired hotspot from chef Johnny Spero is offering a $65 four-course dinner menu with shareable main dishes like roasted pork with semmelknödel (dumplings) and arroz negro with trumpet mushrooms. The meal also includes a choice of grilled oysters (We recommend!) or roasted parsnip salad; scallop with citrus beurre blanc; and churros or crème caramel.

Bresca

A four-course tasting menu at chef Ryan Ratino’s prix fixe-only dining room normally runs you at least $118, so the $65 Restaurant Week dinner menu is a nice way to try It out. Start with a gouda wafer and cauliflower bavarois before moving onto a pasta course–cavatelli with squash and pancetta—and a pork loin with potatoes, bacon, and mustard. Dessert is a cocoa banana cake.

Chiko

These Korean-Chinese fine-casual spots are dishing out $25 lunch and brunch menus and $40 dinner menus. You have your pick of nearly the entire menu and can select a small plate like pork-and- kimchi potstickers, an entree like fiery cumin lamb stir-fry, and a side snack like turmeric-pickled daikon. At dinner, there’s also an amuse bouche and sweet treat. 

Cranes

Chef Pepe Moncayo’s Japanese-Spanish restaurant in Penn Quarter is doing a $35 lunch set—crudo, grilled shrimp, and market fish tempura make their way onto the menu—and a $65 dinner that incorporates specialty Iberian ingredients like fermented piquillos and Iberico pork. Included with both meals: a goat’s milk chocolate cremeux.

Daikaya

The upstairs izakaya atop Daisuke Utagawa and Katsuya Fukushima’s exemplary ramen bar will serve a $40 three-course dinner menu. The exact offerings haven’t been formalized, but expect the evening to start with small bites like edamame with tofu ranch, and include mains like matcha green curry vegetables and chicken katsu. Sides like miso soup and potato salad are included, along with simple desserts.

Gravitas

The $65 three-course dinner menu at this refined Ivy City dining room begins with a white-sweet-potato velouté or koji-cured salmon crudo. Next is a choice of four entrees: a duo of pork with polenta; butternut-squash agnolotti; chicken roulade with sunchoke puree; or pan-seared branzino with yuzu kosho aioli. The menu ends with a suitably polished dessert choice: chocolate torte with hazelnut streusel or hot buttered rum cake with spiced Chantilly cream. Vegetarian modifications are available. 

Jaleo

José Andrés’s 30-year-old tapas flagship is a Restaurant Week veteran, and is offering a $25 lunch menu (three tapas and dessert) and a $40 dinner option (four tapas and dessert). Both menus include some of the Penn Quarter restaurant’s most time-honored tapas, such as endives with oranges and goat cheese; chicken croquetas; gazpacho; and gambas al ajillo.

L’Ardente

Come in for a $35 brunch or lunch at this glitzy Italian restaurant, one of DC’s best and buzziest. Start off with a little gem Caesar or fried calamari and move on to a pizza or pasta course (choose a wood-fired margherita, gnocchi with wild mushrooms, or strozzapreti with Bolognese). Dessert might be olive-oil cake with blood orange or a vanilla semifreddo topped with maple granola. 

La Bise

This bistro from Ashok Bajaj near the White House, which is named for the traditional French greeting kiss, is serving a three-course prix fixe for $35 at lunch and $55 or $65 at dinner, depending on your selections. At lunch, follow a potato-leek soup or winter salad with a traditional croque monsieur, wild mushroom risotto, or steak frites, and finish off with a pear pavlova or flourless chocolate cake. At dinner, many of the same options are available, along with brasserie classics like beef tartare, trout meunière, and boeuf Bourguignon.

Makan

This cool Columbia Heights eatery—one of the area’s few Malaysian restaurants—incorporates regional and Indian-inspired dishes into its $40 dinner menu. Choose any two from a list that includes chicken sate, nasi kunyit (turmeric rice), char kway teow (Penang street noodles), and spicy pork vindaloo. Sago, a tapioca dessert with coconut-pandan cream, winds things down.

Maketto

A decade in, this idiosyncratic boutique/coffee shop/Cambodian-Taiwanese restaurant is still an anchor on H Street, and its Restaurant Week options include a $25 lunch and dinners ranging from $40 up to $65. The specific Restaurant Week menu isn’t yet available, but Maketto’s many dumpling variations, its Cambodian pho, and smoked bison short ribs are all worth a try. 

Nina May

This locavore destination’s “chef’s choice” menu is a great deal any day of the year— and its $55 Restaurant Week dinner is even a few bucks cheaper. The set menu makes its way through six courses, including flounder crudo with grilled scallions and turnips; brown butter-sauced chestnut ravioli; and lemon-thyme roasted chicken with beans and kale.

Rasika

Ashok Bajaj’s twin Indian restaurants—one in West End, the other in Penn Quarter—are are offering $35 lunch and $55 dinners, with options that vary at each place. At lunch, you might find the kitchen’s signature palak chaat and entree options like Scottish salmon tandoori and a  vegetarian thali. At dinner, kebabs and seafood appetizers round out the starters, and mains include the substantial lamb biryani and Kerala halibut curry. Gulab jamun and saffron rice pudding are among the desserts.

Ruthie’s All Day

A $25 three-course lunch is available at this light-filled neighborhood cafe with Southern flavors. Start off with skillet cornbread, deviled eggs, smoked wings, or shrimp-and-jalapeño hushpuppies, then select a main from an extensive list of sandwiches, barbecue platters with sides, and hefty salads. Apple cobbler, butterscotch pudding, and warm cookies with ice cream are hard to turn down for dessert.

St James

Three-course dinners at Jeanine Prime’s Caribbean 14th Street dining room go for $55 per person, and start off with Trini-style pork buns, saltfish accra fritters, or Indo-Caribbean aloo and chana pies. Duck and dhal with coconut rice is one main course option, or substitute the bird with fried eggplant. Desserts are a mango sorbet or molten chocolate cake.

Unconventional Diner

Restaurant Week is often busy at David Deshaies’s sophisticated yet crowd-pleasing Shaw dining room, where a three-course dinner menu is $40. It begins with a “dirty” caesar with squid-ink breadcrumbs, minestrone soup, or buffalo cauliflower with labneh ranch. Next come choices like miso salmon, baby-back ribs with fried yuca, and roast chicken leg with potatoes. For dessert, there’s lemon parfait, chocolate bread pudding, or mango-passionfruit sorbet. 

Xiquet

Danny Lledó’s roomy Glover Park Valencian restaurant is offering a $65 prix fixe dinner, but order judiciously to avoid supplements and upcharges. Included appetizers include Dénia red prawn, partridge with red wine-pear gel, and squash with romesco. Seasonal mushroom and black truffle paella is one main course option.

Ike Allen

Assistant Editor