About DC Restaurant Openings
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
The Oak Room and Bernadette’s. 1218 Wisconsin Ave., NW.
The Oak Room in Georgetown wants you to feel like you’ve been transported to a Gilded Age private club in New York or London, where you can feast on prime rib, Dover sole, and fancy fish sticks with caviar beurre blanc. Upstairs is Bernadette’s, a candlelit, red-velvet-draped “supper club” with a focus on champagne and live music. Both—opening Friday, June 26—come from the hospitality group behind Union Market’s Desert 5 Spot, although don’t expect them to be anything like the country-western bar.
“The idea for Oak Room came from a pretty simple observation, which was: There were no great American dining rooms in Georgetown,” says Ten Five Hospitality managing partner Dan Daley. “We wanted to design something that made people feel like they were in a different time and place. It’s meant to feel worn and lived in, that it’s been around for 100 years.”
Asked how the Oak Room would compare to other American dining rooms in Georgetown like Clyde’s and Martin’s Tavern, which has actually been around nearly 100 years, Daley says they’re great restaurants but “we want to elevate the cuisine and the hospitality to a level that’s not been experienced in Georgetown in a long time.”
Leading the kitchen is chef Timothy Hollingsworth, who was the youngest chef de cuisine at the French Laundry. He’s also a chef-partner in an American brasserie in Belmont, New York and soon, Atlanta. Daley says Hollingsworth was tasked with creating the best version of familiar dishes, whether it’s a crabcake with Old Bay aioli or a Caesar salad with torn croutons and anchovy dressing.
Although they’re not branding the Oak Room as a steakhouse, the menu has plenty of steaks, plus steakhouse sides like creamed spinach and mashed potatoes. “We have tried no less than 100 variations of different steaks from different farms, globally, domestically,” Daley says. Four or five staple cuts—primarily sourced from Brandt Beef, a Holstein-only ranch in southern California—will be available at any given time, along with a rotation of steaks. But one of the meat centerpieces is a koji-and-pepper-rubbed prime rib ($68 to $94 depending on the size of the cut) with jus and horseradish creme fraiche.
A plentiful raw bar selection includes seafood plateaus, clam ceviche, and Daley’s favorite: a chilled seafood cocktail with poached shrimp, raw scallops, lump crab, Clamato, lime, and avocado. Larger seafood dishes include a classic Dover sole with lemon, brown butter, and capers for $105.
A cocktail menu likewise focuses on classics, including five different variations on an old-fashioned and a martini. A wine cellar stores 400 different bottles from Burgundies to Napa Cabs. Daley says bottles start around $85 and go up for bigger splurges.
Upstairs, with a separate entrance, is Bernadette’s, which Daley describes as a “post-war European, Parisian supper club, something that you’d find in the back alleys of Rome or Paris.”
The menu is similar to the Oak Room’s but smaller, and includes steak au poivre, chilled seafood, and a wagyu cheeseburger. A French dip will be unique to Bernadette’s. There’s also a lot of crossover on the cocktails, but the focus is on champagne, with 40 different options available.
The supper club will also have live entertainment, whether a pianist and a vocalist or a jazz trio playing “fun, modern twists on old school songs.”
Already, Ten Five Hospitality is eyeing further expansion in DC. They recently signed a lease to take over the former Rí Rá Irish Pub space in Georgetown, but Daley says they haven’t officially decided what they plan to do there yet.
“We’re trying to do as much as we possibly can in Georgetown,” Daley says. “It’s just, it’s one of my favorite neighborhoods in America, regardless of city.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind DC’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
