About DC Restaurant Openings
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Prim’s Cafe. 1847 7th St., NW.
Ashley Blake used to blog about coffee shops every time she traveled for her former job as a hotel sales manager. Now, she’s fulfilled her longtime dream of opening one of her own. Prim’s Cafe, named after her daughter, serves a simple menu of pastries, coffee, and matcha riffs in Shaw.
“I wanted to give [my daughter] a namesake and say, ‘This is your shop. As a woman, you can do whatever you want,'” Blake says. “I wanted to bring light back into the Shaw neighborhood.”
Blake was previously an owner in Logan Tavern, taking over the longtime Logan Circle restaurant in 2023. After it closed last fall, she refocused on her own solo venture.
She’s partnered with Black woman-owned bakery Sook to provide pastries, including cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, blueberry muffins, and bacon-egg-and-cheese on brioche. Prim’s Cafe also serves staples like avocado toast and bagels with lox.
The coffee comes from two types of Ethiopian beans roasted by Adee’s Coffee Roasters in Baltimore. Expect a full espresso bar lineup, plus Prim’s signature latte with lavender syrup. The cafe also serves several matcha latte twists, including versions incorporating housemade blueberry or strawberry purees as well as chai. “You do your chai first, and then you do your matcha on top,” Blake explains of the surprisingly popular drink.
The cafe plans to host and be a part of a lot of events, including vintage pop-ups, flower bouquet-making workshops, and more. Blake has also tried to make the space appealing to parents and kids with “Prim’s Parlor” in the back, featuring soft couches, storybooks, and artwork exhibits on the walls from a nearby elementary school.
“I remember when I was postpartum, you want to be able to sit with your kid. You want to be able to just relax. And I found a lot of the coffee shops now are very sterile and hard,” Blake says. “I wanted to create something that felt not fully like your grandmother’s living room with the plastic furniture covering, but something that was just homey, that felt welcoming.”
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.
