100 Very Best Restaurants 2015: No. 94 Montmartre

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Montmartre. Photograph by Scott Suchman

About Montmartre

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cuisines
French

This Eastern Market bistro has made our list so many years consecutively you’d think it had a lock or something. But no—no lock. (Nobody has a lock.) It earns its way on by being cozy and hospitable and turning out solidly if unspectacularly prepared food at prices that are more in line with 2001, when it opened, than 2015.

If that doesn’t sound like much, summon the image of a wintry night when you’ve had a hard day and don’t feel like cooking. That’s when Montmartre shows its real value. You settle into your seat amid the warmth and happy clatter of the dining room for a country pâté with crusty bread, followed perhaps by a plate of tender duck confit, and send yourself home fortified and refreshed, with a glass of port and a creamy floating island.

Don’t miss:

  • Octopus with white beans
  • Fish soup
  • Veal loin with sage/red-wine sauce
  • Braised rabbit over linguini
  • Cod with potato gnocchi


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.

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.