About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Maison Bar à Vin. 1834 Columbia Road, NW.
Georgetown’s tiny, popular neo-bistro Lutèce has just six bar seats. “You can’t just come in and be like, ‘Can I get a drink? That’s the one complaint we have from so many people,'” says co-owner Omar Popal, whose family is also behind the beloved Afghan restaurant Lapis and the Mexican destination Pascual. That predicament is what led to their latest opening: Maison Bar à Vin, a Paris-inspired wine bar in Adams Morgan where, yes, you can just pop in for a glass of Petit Chablis, along with smoked eel croquettes and other French-inspired plates from star chef Matt Conroy. It’s set to debut on Saturday, September 13.
The name Maison means “home,” and the century-old building—previously Habana Village—was originally a residence, complete with five (working!) fireplaces. Only the first-floor bar will open to start. The majority of the space will be devoted to walk-ins, but a green velvet curtain in the back hides a small dining room with zebra-print carpet for reservations.
The Food
Conroy describes the menu as “fun, good drinking food,” starting with some fancy snacks like seaweed choux buns filled with smoky whipped fish roe. There’ll also be old-school “very French” options, like a housemade country terrine. “A lot of that kind of stuff, people don’t really make in restaurants anymore,” Conroy says.
Another dish combines mushrooms, escargots, and bone marrow with a butter-yellow Chartreuse sauce and garlicky puff pastry shaped like a cinnamon roll. And then there are those eel croquettes, with smoked and simmered eel from Maine that’s folded into a creamy béchamel sauce.
Among the larger plates: brioche-stuffed chicken breast with chanterelles and a “nice chicken jus,” as well as housemade pasta with a slightly spicy shellfish tomato sauce and Maine mussels.
While Isabel Coss, Conroy’s wife and co-chef at Lutèce, is known for her desserts, he’s behind the sweets here. Look for a “very rich and in-your-face” chocolate tart as well as fig-leaf-and-coconut ice cream with fresh figs. Conroy says he saves the locations of fig trees in the area on a Google map so he can source the leaves: “People don’t realize they’re everywhere in DC.”
The Drinks
The bar will stock more than 1,000 bottles of wine, which you can glimpse on the way to the candle-lit restrooms in the basement. About 20 wines will be available by the glass at any given time. The focus will be on natural wines—about 60 percent of them French.
“Everyone thinks it’s kombucha, but some of the most expensive wines in the world are natural,” Conroy says. “When we say ‘natural,’ it just means it’s the same as the way we source our tomatoes or our meat, finding it from a farm or people that are doing things the correct way. A lot of wines, people don’t realize it, but they’re pumped with pesticides and additives.”
Cocktails all incorporate wine ingredients or something made by a vintner. For example, beverage director Suzy Critchlow, who’s also behind the drinks at Pascual, has created an espresso martini with a Madeira/passionfruit foam. There’s also a riesling highball with herbs de Provence and cucumber. Expect options using non-alcoholic wines too.
The place aims to be a late-night industry hangout. To start, the bar will stay open until 1 AM on weekends with food available to midnight. A late-night menu will include bone marrow topped with escargots; moules frites; and a chicken cordon bleu sandwich.
Popal says the team hopes to channel what Au Pied de Cochon in Georgetown was to many chefs and industry folks back in the day: “You’d see Michel Richard or people from his staff coming to eat. The idea is that people would come here as well and be able to still get a decent enough meal, definitely a drink, and complain about working brunch the next day,” Popal says.
Coming soon…
By the new year, the team is aiming to open the second floor lounge, which will feature more dining space plus live music and DJs. Popal wants to conjure the same vibe as the basement parties he used to throw in the Champagne room of long-gone Napoleon in Adams Morgan. “The Napoleon parties in the basement are notorious,” Popal says. “People were coming into our space to poach the DJs that I had.”
Later in 2026, a private events space will open on the third floor for buyouts and regular wine dinners. Popal says they’ve hosted such dinners with winemakers and wine book authors at Lutèce, but have always felt restricted by space.
“We would be able to do a lot more fun stuff, creative stuff if we just had a space dedicated to that,” Popal says. “To wave a magic wand, here we are.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
