About DC Restaurant Openings
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Cork Wine Bar and Market. 3504 Connecticut Ave., NW.
It’s been an uncertain time for the wine business amid Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff implementation. (At one point last year, the president threatened a 200 percent tariff on European wines.) And for Cork Wine Bar co-owner Diane Gross—the board chair of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan—it’s also been an uncertain time for the DC dining scene, from the future of the city’s tipped wage to mass federal layoffs.
Nonetheless, Gross and her husband Khalid Pitts have forged ahead with an expansion of their beloved 14th Street wine bar and market. Cork opened its newest location in Cleveland Park this week—but with a smaller footprint, no servers, and a limited kitchen to better adapt to the current climate. It will also have a mezzanine tasting room for wine classes and events.
“We’ve been looking for a couple years at expanding,” Gross says. “We were really focused on going into neighborhoods where Cork regulars live and work, and are raising their families, and have been for years saying, ‘Please come, please come.'”
The new Cork will continue to focus primarily on old-world wines from France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Austria, and small producers making organic, biodynamic, and sustainable wines.
“It’s really what we’ve built our brand on. It was wines that really spoke to us,” Gross says of continuing to focus on European wines, even amid new tariffs. “They were wines that were made in the vineyard, not in the winery. They were minimal intervention. The grape was doing the talking.”
Unlike the full-service 14th Street location, this wine bar will be counter service only, meaning you order a glass from the same person ringing up your bottle purchase. Expect a weekly rotating selection of 15 wines by the glass, alongside around 350 bottles available to-go or to sip on-site (with a $25 corkage fee).
Cork Wine Bar will also have a condensed food menu with cheese, charcuterie, tinned fish, salads, and light bites. And, yes, you’ll still find Cork’s famed avocado toast with pistachio oil—one of the first on the scene nearly 20 years ago. The market will also sell cheese and charcuterie to-go, along with Cork’s own chicken liver pate, pickles, vinaigrettes, and more.
Gross and Pitts opened the original Cork Wine Bar on 14th Street in 2008 and moved it to its current location in 2017. They also have a location in Spring Valley.
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.
