Acqua Bistecca

Chef Michael Mina’s Italian steak-and-­seafood place in City Ridge might be more of a neighborhood spot than Bourbon Steak, his high-rolling restaurant in Georgetown’s Four Seasons, but it’s still plenty glitzy. Chargrilled steaks are brushed with Lambrusco butter—there’s even a gargantuan mozzarella stick topped with caviar, for goodness’ sake.

Bao Bei

A Rockville strip mall has been extra crowded since chef Kevin Hsieh found a permanent home there in August for his popular Taiwanese ghost kitchen. The squishy bao—steamed buns filled with braised pork belly or tofu—are hits here, as are rice bowls topped with traditional braised pork or a sweet-and-salty fried chicken cutlet dredged in sweet-potato flour.

Chai Pani

Asheville and the Atlanta suburb of Decatur love their outposts of Meher­wan Irani’s James Beard Award–winning Indian street-food spot. In August, a third location arrived in the Union Market District, with celebrated Mississippi chef Vishwesh “Vish” Bhatt at the helm. The colorful dining room serves vibrant street snacks, plus some Indian dishes that nod to the American South, such as matchstick okra fries and a KFC (Kashmiri fried chicken) sandwich.

Dawa

Eric Adjepong’s contemporary Ghanaian spot, Elmina, was an exciting arrival on 14th Street this year, with a $135 tasting menu and a more accessible à la carte option. Now the chef has launched a fast-casual takeout operation within the same space—think jollof rice topped with suya-crusted short rib and a West African take on ramen.

Dok Khao

The most exciting of the new culinary options in the towering new Chevy Chase Lake development is this polished Thai dining room—part of a chain that includes locations in Virginia and Columbia. It pairs elaborate cocktails and desserts with dishes like Phuket chili crab and lamb massaman curry.

El Mercat Bar de Tapas

The Rockville tapas bar from a former Boqueria chef sprouted a twin in Pentagon City in September. There are dozens of options for tapas here—beyond croquetas and patatas bravas—plus paellas made with bomba rice, Ibérico ham sold by the ounce, and plenty of Rioja and sangria.

Eunoia

This idiosyncratic global restaurant near Union Market is a collaboration between Iva and Alex Gotzev—who run a Bulgarian cafe and Pilates studio in Dupont Circle—and Mexico City–born chef Josa Maldonado. Their regularly shifting vegetable-­forward menu incorporates housemade preserves, ferments, and a seaweed mole with ingredients including potato miso and coconut milk.

Florería Atlántico/Brasero Atlántico

It sounds like a one-of-a-kind proposition: a flower shop that hides a bar behind an unassuming fridge door. But this isn’t just another speakeasy—it’s a Northern Hemisphere location of Florería Atlántico, an Old World–style Buenos Aires cocktail bar that has ranked among the world’s 50 best. Next door to the Georgetown spot is Brasero Atlántico, led by chef Manuela Carbone, where you can order wood-fired steaks and small plates that represent Argentina’s mélange of immigrant cuisines.

Hush Harbor

It might come off as gimmicky, but this bar’s buzzy no-phones policy (you keep the device with you, locked in a magnetic pouch) is only meant to encourage the kind of relaxation and focus on the moment that smartphones often steal from us. This is complemented by classic cocktails and chef Rock Harper’s soulful Southern bar food, including shrimp rémoulade; red beans and rice; and pimiento cheese.

Kayu

Chef Paolo Dungca’s Filipino tasting room on the H Street corridor closed this summer. He’s recently relaunched it with a more casual, pared-down iteration in Dupont Circle. Dungca’s cassava cake with crab fat, jamón Ibérico, and trout roe didn’t go anywhere.

Maison Bar à Vins

The team behind Lutèce—among other lauded DC restaurants—are professional Francophiles, and their new Adams Morgan bar is a tribute to the kind of place you’d be thrilled to wander into in Paris, where inventive small plates pair with excellent wine. Here that means things like terrines, escargot-topped bone marrow, and brioche-stuffed chicken.

Naja

Kirby Club, Rose Previte’s Mosaic District kebab spot, is no longer. But her lieutenant, general manager Tariq Alaeddin, has remade the space into a Lebanese restaurant of his own. Find a garlicky Beirut-style chicken wrap, beef kibbeh, and a full slate of kebabs.

Nuli

The first US location of Ada Osakwe’s Nigerian healthy fast-casual chain landed in the Square, the downtown DC food hall, this summer, serving up jollof-rice bowls and naan wraps. With menu sections for gluten-free, dairy-free, high-fiber, nut-free, and plant-based dining, it caters to a wide variety of diets, too.

Tempo Shack

A takeout momo business that began inside a Himalayan grocery in Ashburn now has a window just off the H Street corridor slinging Nepali barbecue and all manner of momos—dumplings filled with chicken, water buffalo, or a vegan stuffing, all served steamed with tomato chutney, in broth, or fried in a chili sauce.

Upstate FTW

In Western New York, winters are bitter and football reigns supreme. The hearty, Super Bowl–friendly local dishes—Buffalo wings, garbage plates, beef-on-weck sandwiches—reflect that. Inside the U Street bar Sport & Social, upstate native (and Anju and Chiko co-chef/owner) Scott Drewno embraces all of these dishes, along with French-bread pizzas on an entire baguette and lesser-known delicacies such as white hots and pork spiedies.

This article appears in the November 2025 issue of Washingtonian.