Neighborhood Guide: Where to Eat, Shop, and Play in Petworth

Georgia Avenue is the artery that links the three vibrant Northwest DC neighborhoods of Petworth, Park View, and 16th Street Heights. Historically home to mainly Black families, the area has become more diverse—and gentrified—with trendy local businesses popping up along busy Upshur Street, 14th Street, and Georgia Avenue. On the dense side streets of Petworth and Park View, blocks of brick rowhouses climb up gentle hills, each front porch a little higher than the one next door. In quiet 16th Street Heights, you’ll find bungalows, stately four-squares, embassies, and a diverse array of places of worship. Here are new reasons to visit each neighborhood.

 

Eat and Drink

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Almeda*

The Upshur Street space that now houses Almeda has been home to at least five restaurants that have closed within the past decade. But chef Danielle Harris knows the territory well: She’s moved her cafe, Little Food Studio, from just across the street. Almeda is a celebration of African diasporic cuisine, with a tight menu of dishes such as jollof risotto with pickled plantain and cabbage and the Midwest-inspired fried catfish with spaghetti. Harris is keeping Little Food Studio open for daytime takeout in the new space.

*This restaurant closed August 31.

 

Ice ’N’ Slice

For proof that DC’s Ethiopian food scene is among the most diverse and inventive anywhere, Ice ’N’ Slice presents probably the nation’s only Ethiopian pizza parlor. Owner Semret Asfaw opened the eatery in 2022 to complement Heat Da Spot, an Ethiopian cafe ten blocks down Georgia Avenue that’s become a neighborhood favorite. Doro wat pizza comes topped with the cuisine’s classic slow-cooked chicken, and the vegetarian Addis Ababa pie is loaded with spiced veggies like cabbage, lentils, and spinach. Breakfast sandwiches, kitfo wraps, and a wide range of smoothies and ice cream are also worth your attention, and you can pick them all up from a takeout window.

 

San Matteo

Since last August, handsome San Matteo  has been serving regional Italian pastas such as mafaldine norma, agnolotti e limone, and pappardelle funghi. White marble tables, brass fixtures, and checkered floors adorn the upscale storefront space. The trattoria, from the team behind Al Volo and Soleluna, is also your spot in Petworth for a summer-afternoon spritz and some salumi.

 

Hedzole

Candice Mensah’s pan–West African Hedzole is as distinctive and personal as fast-casual bowl restaurants get. Mensah’s ruby-red vegan jollof rice is one choice of base, and you can add veggies such as kale, sauces including jerk barbecue, stews enriched with melon seed and chile, or proteins ranging from baked salmon to stewed oxtails. Hedzole was a roving pop-up, but it’s now a destination-worthy anchor for the modest commercial strip at Colorado Avenue and 14th Street.

 

Do and Shop

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Flowers by Alexes

In a story fit for the Hallmark Channel, Alexes Haggins reopened her family’s legacy floral shop, Flowers by Alexes, last year in Petworth—nearly 20 years after they had to close it in 2003 due to the death of her father, Bernard Haggins. A delivery driver for what was then Colony Florist in the 1960s, Bernard eventually took over the shop, renamed it after his daughter, and moved it to Upshur Street, where he was a beloved figure, often seen chatting with customers while selling flowers outside the store. Carrying on her father’s legacy, Alexes—now the owner—can also be found setting up outdoors on sunny days and selling fresh flowers in bountiful handcrafted bouquets, along with houseplants and other gifts, from the small shop.

 

Reunion Hot Yoga

After the pandemic forced the 20-year-old yoga studio Hot Spot Dupont to permanently close, one of its former teachers, Holly Hancock, set out to reunite her community of yogis at a new space, Reunion Hot Yoga, in Park View. Named for its intent to bring people together and also as a nod to the Sanskrit translation of the word yoga—“union”—the hot-yoga sanctuary has been namasteing since last August, with an emphasis on inclusive and beginner-friendly yoga. Break a sweat with the studio’s original hot-yoga class, a 90-minute sequence of 26 postures and two breathing exercises, or release tension with the slow-flow class, combining mindful movement with deep breathing.

 

The Neighborgoods

Chances are you’ve seen the handicrafts of Jodi Kostelnik at local gift shops. She’s known for her foodie-themed dish towels, tote bags, onesies, and aprons—often nestled in paper berry baskets and hand-printed with whimsical illustrations of fruits and vegetables. After churning out orders from her home basement over the past few years, the DC artist moved her booming gifts business, The Neighborgoods, into a new studio space in Petworth, where she fulfills orders for more than 900 retailers nationwide. While the studio—lined with her own cheery window decals—isn’t open to the public for shopping, it occasionally hosts Open Studio events, such as an upcoming one on September 14, when you can shop and take a peek at how her art gets made.

 

Rhizome Body Works

Lying prone on a massage table with little to no clothing can be a vulnerable experience, especially for people with marginalized identities, disabilities, or insecurities. Informed by her own experience as a trans woman and driven by the belief that everyone deserves therapeutic massage without fear of stigma, Vanessa Crowley is bringing her practice, Rhizome Body Works, to Park View. It will be the first permanent home for the practice—she has operated out of a physical-therapy office—and will offer massage for chronic pain, deep-tissue work, and myofacial release, among other therapies. Expected to open sometime late this fall to early next year, the 1,300-square-foot space, all on one level, will be fully accessible, with automatic doors and inclusive massage tables featuring adjustable width extenders.

 

Dance Loft on 14

When the crumbling 1920s Art Deco building at 4618 14th Street went up for sale in 2018, Diana Movius—owner of Dance Loft on 14, which had been holding dance classes out of the building since 2015—saw an opportunity. She dreamed of having a state-of-the-art performance center in the neighborhood, but she also recognized the need for more affordable housing. So she decided to aim for both. She and the affordable developer Heleos bought the property and began partnering to create a mixed-use “green arts complex” that will contain two theaters and four studios—plus a dance lobby, theater lobby, and gallery wall—on the ground floor, with 100 apartments above, two-thirds of them affordable. The ambitious project’s current estimate for completion is 2027.

 

Carter Barron Amphitheatre

Those who have been yearning to see a show at Rock Creek Park’s beautiful Carter Barron Amphitheatre will need to wait a bit longer . . . okay, a lot longer. The venue, located off Colorado Avenue, closed in 2017 after an inspection found that the stage’s structure wasn’t strong enough to hold the weight of performers and equipment. Seven years later, it remains shuttered, with the National Park Service still working on designs and seeking funding. As of now, NPS says it doesn’t expect Carter Barron will be ready to reopen for several more years.

 

Neighborhood Classics

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Petworth and Park View may be changing rapidly, but some of Georgia Avenue’s longtime takeout and casual eateries are still with us–and still eminently affordable. Foodies may want to check out these cheap-eats institutions.

 

Büna Coffeehouse

Expect a cross-section of the neighborhood–multigenerational families, remote workers, punks, and Ethiopian Orthodox clergy–at this beloved corner coffee shop where you can grab anything from a lox bagel to spicy, fluffy injera-based firfir.

 

Fish in the Neighborhood

Much was made of this corner fish fry’s decision to add “Neighbor” to its former name, Fish in the ’Hood: Was Park View so gentrified that it was no longer a hood? At any rate, it’s nice to see that it’s held on, frying whiting and catfish to order and scooping homey soul-food sides like collard greens and potato salad.

 

Heat Da Spot Café

Semret and Timnit Goitom opened this cafe in only 2015, but it’s already hard to imagine Park View without its great Ethiopian breakfasts, chai, and bacon-egg-and-cheese croissants. Above a row of fancy gilded chairs, a sign reads “We are not fast food. We make and eat with love. Order, pay, and sit on the throne, kings and queens.”

 

Howard China

DC’s carryout staple–fried chicken wings with mumbo sauce, and maybe some fries or fried rice–doesn’t come much better than at “HoChi,” an utterly bare-bones corner Chinese place near Howard University that’s been open late for nearly 30 years.

 

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What’s Selling

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Petworth and Park View offer afford­able rowhouses alongside modern condos, while 16th Street Heights boasts historic single-family homes. Here’s some of what’s sold recently.

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This article appears in the August 2024 issue of Washingtonian.