100 Very Best Restaurants 2015: No. 70 The Partisan

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The Partisan becomes part of the growing trend of butchery/restaurants, with Red Apron (left) adjoining the sit-down dinner spot. Photographs by Jeff Elkins

About The Partisan

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The lighting is soft, the music low, the vibe sophisticated—but make no mistake: This Penn Quarter haunt is about dude food.

What, you ask, is dude food? Food by dudes (in this case, veteran chefs Nathan Anda and Ed Witt) and for dudes. That’s not to say you have to be a dude to come here; just don’t go looking for satisfaction in salads and other light, refreshing fare (and don’t go looking for prettified plating, either). You’re here to gorge on charcuterie, served up in a dizzying variety of ways, including virtuosic and almost comically abundant butcher’s boards, and to let Anda and Witt show you how a simple, robust thing like a pasta Bolognese can be made much less simple and infinitely more robust, thanks to no dainty amount of beef heart and guanciale.

Because this is an outpost of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, you can count on drinking wonderfully well, whether one of Jeff Faile’s deftly made cocktails or a half glass, glass, or bottle from the good and varied wine list.

Don’t miss:

  • Cotechino (ground pork with pork-skin patty)
  • Mortadella
  • Seared foie gras with maple-cider gastrique
  • Rabbit pot pie
  • Cocoa-and-coffee-spiced quail
  • Meatball with polenta
  • Whiskey-braised lamb ribs
  • Walnut-bourbon pie
  • Snickers terrine


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.