100 Very Best Restaurants 2014: Mintwood Place

No. 21 on this year's list.

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Mintwood's dishes, such as this Bolognese, draw an international fan club. Photograph by Scott Suchman

About Mintwood Place

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“Surprise and delight” is a buzzy corporate marketing strategy these days, and although there’s nothing cookie-cutter or commercial about this woodsy Adams Morgan restaurant, you can’t help but think chef Cedric Maupillier has taken the slogan as his credo. Order hushpuppies and they’ll turn up studded with bits of escargot. Steak tartare is classically rendered, except for the pile of warm fried cubes of potato tossed atop it. A beet salad is brilliantly reimagined as a pressed sandwich, oozy with goat cheese.

It’s a testament to Maupillier’s talent that none of his playfulness feels gimmicky or in-your-face. The room, with its tiled open kitchen and antiquey wrought-iron accents is one of the coziest spaces around, but you’ll have to lean in close for intimate conversation—it’s also one of the loudest. 

Open: Tuesday through Friday for dinner, Saturday and Sunday for brunch and dinner. 

Don’t miss: Chicken-liver tartine; bacon-and-onion tart; suckling-pig croquettes with mole sauce; bacon cheeseburger; cassoulet; roast chicken; tagliatelle Bolognese; brownie sundae.


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.