More fried chicken for all: Boss Shepherd’s, Washington’s newest Southern spot, debuts on Monday. The seasonal American restaurant from J. Paul’s founder Paul Cohn opens for lunch and dinner next to the Warner Theatre.
Chef Jeremy Waybright, formerly of Alexandria’s Union Street Public House, serves up a menu that mixes classic and riffed-upon Southern dishes. Think Parker House rolls spread with sweet-cream butter, pork roast with corn succotash, pot pie “fritters” with sage-sausage gravy, and fried chicken with smoked egg yolk, butter-poached radishes, and biscuits. The lunchtime crowd may draw from a variety of sandwiches and burgers, including pastrami salmon with dill cream or local mushrooms on a pretzel roll with Mornay sauce. Waybright has already begun sourcing from a number of farms within the Chesapeake watershed for ingredients.
No Southern-inspired restaurant would be complete without whiskey. Brown-liquor fans will find two five-gallon barrels of A. Smith Bowman reserve behind the bar, as well as local spirits and beers, and 35 wines by the glass. Should you drop by for a first-date drink, here’s your icebreaker/fun fact: The restaurant is named for Alexander “Boss” Shepherd (a.k.a. the father of Modern Washington), a powerful city boss who revitalized the District after the Civil War.
Boss Shepherd’s. 1299 Pennsylvania Ave., NW; 202-347-2677. Open at 11 for lunch and dinner Monday through Friday. Open at 4 on Saturday. Closed Sunday.
Find Anna Spiegel on Twitter at @annaspiegs.
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.
