100 Very Best Restaurant 2016: The Dabney

Photograph by Andrew Propp.

Few kitchens are equipped with 19th-century cookbooks or a Colonial-style hearth, but that’s just part of the reason the Dabney has set itself apart in its three-month existence. Chef Jeremiah Langhorne—who left Charleston’s lauded McCrady’s to build his Shaw restaurant—aspires to do for the Mid-Atlantic what mentor Sean Brock has done for Southern cuisine. We’ve found the greatest satisfaction in exploring the smaller plates, including toasty sweet-potato rolls with pepper jelly, Duke’s mayo, and pork belly, or buttermilk biscuits stacked with fried eggs and foie gras. Langhorne does double duty as pastry chef with aplomb, leaving us to wonder why no one thought of an apple crumble with Angostura-bitters ice cream sooner.

Don’t miss: Pork rillettes with pickled turnips; grilled brassica greens with potato purée and crispy shallots; seared scallops and barbecue turnips with malted barley; whole fried porgy.

See what other restaurants made our 100 Very Best Restaurants list. This article appears in our February 2016 issue of Washingtonian.


Food Editor

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.

Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.