I second everyone who suggests staying away from Ben’s Chili Bowl. If you’re in the U Street neighborhood and want a cheap meal, I suggest the exceedingly good Fast Gourmet for a sandwich (fastgourmetdc.com).
I love Jose Andres’s restaurants (China Chilcano, Jaleo, Zaytinya, and Oyamel among others) but I think they might be a little “foodie” and the cost of the small plates adds up. If these places aren’t too expensive and you are adventurous enough to eat there, you might also like the delicious modern Indian food at Ashok Bajaj’s Rasika (rasikarestaurant.com) or, from the same owner, the excellent traditional Indian food at the Bombay Club (bombayclubdc.com).
I like Thai X-ing, but it’s a fixed menu and not everyone likes having their meal picked for them with no choices. If you like Thai food and don’t mind just eating what the kitchen makes for you, I’d suggest Little Serow in Dupont Circle (http://www.littleserow.com/). They don’t take reservations and the tables at busy times can fill up pretty quickly.
If you find yourself north of DC proper and want some tasty dim sum, I recommend the soup dumplings and nearly anything else on the menu at Bob’s Shanghai 66 in Rockville. It’s not too far from the Rockville Metro stop but you’d be making the trip out there just for the food. There’s not much else to see in that area around Rockville.
If you like Korean and can get to Annandale, VA (by car or possibly bus), I suggest Yechon (yechon.com). This is an unassuming place but the prices are pretty low and the food is excellent. Again, there’s not much else there but a bunch of similarly good Korean restaurants, so you have to really want it to make the trek.
Let us know what you plan to visit when you are in DC and can probably help you pick some of the best restaurants that are nearby each destination. I hope you enjoy your trip.
These are all awesome. So many good recommendations! I knew I could count on my fellow Dopers!
Tired and Cranky, we are pretty loosey-goosey for this trip. We are definitely doing Capital Fourth, so most of Monday the 4th is taken up with that. We plan on the Newseum for most of another day. Otherwise, nothing much scheduled except checking out the Mall and some monuments.
We have been to DC once previously, so we’ve done the Capitol/Supreme Court/Library of Congress/Archives tours before, as well as the Holocaust Museum and a chunk of the Smithsonian. We also got to check out the Old Post Office well before Trump got his grubby fingers on it.
My son is interning there this summer, and has a place out by the Stadium/Armory metro. What about the Eastern Market area - anything particularly neat around there?
And they have the most incredible beer selection. If you happen to be on the orange line there’s one that’s a bit shorter walk in Dunn Loring - just two blocks away.
Around Eastern Market, you should visit Ted’s Bulletin if you like diner-style food.
I hear you, and if a restaurant is going to operate on a strictly prix fixe basis, everything had better be really really good, but I’ve never been served a dish I didn’t like at Thai X-ing, even on vegetarian night. Plus there’s something very amusing to me about just sitting down and being brought random food. Only problem I’ve ever had there is more food being brought out after I was already full!
Incidentally, if you have time one evening, we can arrange a Dopefest for you. We can arrange to all eat at some restaurant that we can agree on where we can sit around and talk. This can be just you or you and your wife.
Near Eastern Market, I would second the recommendation for Ted’s Bulletin. District Taco also has an outlet near there if you just want to grab a quick bite. Some people love Montmartre, but I’d advise staying away from there. The food is okay but it is run by the least hospitable French woman in DC. I believe that she is trying to live up to the stereotype of an imperious, snobby Parisian for no reason other than to make her customers feel inferior. I think there is also a Matchbox pizza near there. I haven’t been to that one, but I’ve liked the pizza at their other locations.
The Newseum is only four or so blocks from China Chilcano, the downtown Jaleo, and maybe five or so from Zaytinya. I would probably get reservations at one of those. If they are too crowded, about five blocks from the Newseum is Chinatown Express. It’s a dive restaurant but they have delicious fried noodles or noodles in soup and cheap roast duck. Other things on the menu are pretty good but those are the highlights for me.
The Mall doesn’t have a lot of restaurants, but I remember a few years ago liking the restaurant at the National Museum of the American Indian. It might be super crowded this weekend though.
I don’t think there are any restaurants near the Holocaust Museum. I haven’t been there in many years and I’m wondering if that might be a good day to find a food truck nearby and try your luck. DC has caught onto the food truck trend so you can get some tasty food on wheels but I don’t have any specific recommendations.
Let me second this. It’s been a long time since I lived there, but Ethiopian food is fairly uncommon in a lot of places and an interesting dining experience. The best place when I lived there was The Red Sea – dunno if it’s still around.
Unfortunately the Dancing Crab is no longer open. While you’re in the area you should try to find some steamed crabs. Google showed me some alternatives, but nothing with Crab in the name of the restaurant. I don’t know what you’ll find south of Baltimore that really does it right except on the Virginia shore.
> There’s not a lot of excellent Thai food around DC, but one place you’ll find it is
> Thai Square on Columbia Pike (also near The Plaza at 2501).
Really? I put “best Thai restaurants in D.C.”, “best Thai restaurants in northern Virginia”, and “best Thai restaurants in Maryland” into Google and I got dozens of websites about such restaurants. It seems to me that this area is full of Thai restaurants. Why don’t you think that they’re excellent? Here’s some typical websites I found recommending Thai restaurants:
A fair question. I’m not one of those people who thinks that DC lacks good places to eat, but having lived in Los Angeles, where really top-notch Thai food abounds, I haven’t had the same experience in DC. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison, but it’s my subjective experience. I suspect it’s a matter of demographics, but I’m having trouble pulling up any statistics to back up my claim.
I will say that I’m old enough to remember when Chinese restaurants enjoyed a near monopoly on the Asian food market, but in the last 30 years or so, you may have noticed that the number of good Chinese restaurants around DC has declined considerably. This effect, it seems to me, has led to a lot of Chinese people cooking non-Chinese food for Americans, along with a proliferation of Fusion style restaurants - which are not necessarily bad, and can often be hotbeds of creativity, but doesn’t tend to lead to a uniformly great and authentic Thai food experience.
Chinatown these days is basically a block and a half on H St.; it used to be about a half dozen full city blocks, but the Chinese long ago escaped to the suburbs, which is why all the best Chinese (and other Asian) restaurants are in the 'burbs now.
Everybody has their favorite Ethiopian restaurant in DC, but you’re right they’re everywhere. There are some nice ones around U Street, also Dino’s Grotto is a nice Italian place just around the corner from the U St. Metro.
