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Dining in DC: Notes from a Week in the Capital

February 21, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Some months ago, my cousin Adriana mentioned that she’d be visiting New York and Washington DC for her family’s annual vacation this year. Mike and I had been in New York earlier that year, but I thought that a visit to Washington DC might be warranted. I hadn’t been there since my oldest was a baby, and I enjoy spending time with Adriana a lot – she is one of the most positive people I know.

Dining out and exploring local cuisines is one of the great pleasures of traveling, but unlike New York and New Orleans, there isn’t actually a Washingtonian cuisine. People come to Washington from all over the country and the world, so there are all sorts of restaurants and I think competition and fat expense accounts do make this a foodie town, but there is nothing particularly unique about the cuisine. Thus, rather than try to hit specific cultural culinary experiences as we did in the other two cities, we just went for what was convenient and well reviewed.

We got to DC at the tail end of winter restaurant week, so for our first two meals we got to enjoy restaurants that might otherwise have been out of budget.

We had an exciting dinner at Imperfecto in Foggy Bottom
And a nice brunch at Balos Estiatorio in Dupont Circle

Also in Foggy Bottom, we got take out twice from Charm Thai and had a nice Italian dinner at Matera.

There aren’t too many choices near the National Mall but we had a very tasty lunch at Sweet Home Café in the African American History and Culture Museum, a much more common place one at Ocean Terrace Café at the Natura History Museum and a funnel cake at Refreshment Kiosk @ The National Mall.

After visiting the outside of the White House, we had a wonderful lunch at The Hamilton.

And while visiting the Capitol, we had breakfast at the Capitol Cafe and an unforgettable lunch with my favorite Congressmember at the The Members Dining Room Restaurant. We also got snacks while enjoying Live! at the Library of Congress.

Finally, we convinced Adriana to try Ethiopian food and had a great meal at Ethiopic.

We then left DC for Virginia and had lunch at Brookside Restaurant in Luray after visiting Shenandoah National Park.

We finished our trip visiting my friend Lavinia and enjoyed several great meals with her. We had wonderful Indian food at Curry Mantra in Fairfax and amazing Ethiopian, plus a cultural experience to boot, in JD Bar & Restaurant in Annandale. Finally, our last day, we started with a comforting breakfast at The Original Pancake House in Falls Church.

As great as the food was, the best part of the trip was seeing Adriana and her family, Lavinia and hers and my favorite Congressman!.

Dining in DC: Ethiopic

February 17, 2025 / / 0 Comments 
Dining in DC: Notes from a Week in the Capital

Accessible and tasty Ethiopian food in stylish surroundings

Washington DC is not known for any particular dish or cuisine. As a city that attracts people from all over the US and the world, its strengths are in the variety of food found here, rather than on any particular manifestation of it. However, it has gained a reputation for its Ethiopian food offerings, as it homes the largest population of Ethiopians outside Ethiopia itself.

Now, I happen to live next to Oakland, California, which is another mecca for Ethiopian and Eritrean food. Ethiopian food was one of the first I tried my hands on – back at a time where I had to make my own berbere and injera -, and thus it’s not a cuisine I’d have sought out but for the fact that I was pretty sure my Argentinian cousin Adriana and her family would not have tried it. As common as Ethiopian food may be in DC and in the Bay Area, it’s still pretty niche in most of the US (you literally have to go to Little Ethiopia to find an Ethiopian restaurant in Los Angeles county) and I was sure it was totally inexistent in Argentina. Adriana was game for trying it, so I made a reservation at Ethiopic for our last night together in Washington DC.

Ethiopic is an upscale, stylish and popular restaurant in the H Street Corridor, The soft yellow walls are decorated with modern Ethiopian art, which was cool to see after our visit to the African Art Museum. Its clear that the restaurant caters to an international audience, as they were very friendly and patient with our not-fully English speaking party.

The menu offers traditional Ethiopian dishes and what is the largest variety of honey wines I have ever seen. Usually, Ethiopian restaurants in the Bay Area offer just a couple of options, if that – Ethiopic has about seven! Mike and my daughter both ordered the Mama’s Honey Tej ($12 per glass), a pretty sweet version that feels almost like a dessert wine. They both really liked it. I had the smooth bethel tej ($12), which was less sweet but bubbly and a lot of fun. I’ll try to find it locally.

As appetizers, we got both the beef and lentil sambusas ($8 per order of 3). These cousins to Indian samosas are popular throughout Eastern Africa and consist of fried, flaky dough with seasoned fillings. Neither were spicy but they were both very tasty.

We ordered several dishes, but they weren’t actually served family style as we expected. That was probably better, as it would have been a bit hard to reach given our rectangular table for six.

The Beef & Chicken Wot Sampler ($40), which is meant to serve two people, was a delight. It includes minchet abish key wot and minchet abish aletcha wot as well as doro key wot and doro aletcha wot. The doro dishes are chicken, while the minchet abish are ground beef based. The aletcha offerings are basically the mild versions of the wots, cooked without berbere. They were all delicious, and the wots weren’t very spicy, no one in Adriana’s family had a problem with them. My favorite, by far, was the minchet abish aletcha wot – it was sooooo good, I’m still dreaming about it.

We also got an order of beef tibs ($22). These was a dry dish, but the beef cubes were nicely spiced and not terribly spicy. Everyone liked them.

The Yebeg Aletcha Be Dinich ($18) was good but I didn’t like as much as the other dishes. the lamb was tender, however, and not terribly fatty.

My nephew, Lito, who has not yet reached his teenage years, surprised us all by saying he wanted to get the asa tib ($16) – a marinated and fried fish. The fish came with the skin on, which was a novelty for him, and it wasn’t the easiest thing to eat without silverware, but he was a champ and dug right in. So did the rest of us, and we all found the fish to be absolutely delicious. It was crispy, flavorful and perfectly cooked.

My daughter, a vegetarian, had the kik alicha ($17), a favorite of hers. This is a mild dish of split peas. She felt that it tasted just like it was supposed to and liked it.

She also had the honey nut baklava ($7). She didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as it was very syrupy and she prefers drier versions.

We must have been pretty hungry, as while the portions seemed generous we ended up eating everything and had no leftovers to take with us.

In all, we had a very nice meal and I was very happy that Adriana and her family liked the food so much. I think it’s a little bit Americanized, and it definitely does not have the level of spice that I expected – but I feel that Ethiopian food has been getting milder over the years (or, more likely, I’ve adjusted to spicier flavors). 

Ethiopic
401 H St NE,
Washington, DC 20002
202-675-2066

Dining in DC: The Members Dining Room Restaurant @ the Capitol

February 16, 2025 / / 0 Comments 
Dining in DC: Notes from a Week in the Capital

We got to dine at the Congressmember-Only Dining Room!

Our trip to Washington DC was amazing, and one of the main highlights was having lunch at the Members Dining Room at the Capitol. This is a dining room reserved exclusively for members of the US House of Representatives, their staffers, (the US Senate has its own dining room) and their guests. It only operates when Congress is in session, though before the pandemic it had been open for reservations to anyone on the days Congress wasn’t in session. This no longer seems to be the case.

The Members Dining Room has actually two main dining rooms. One appears to be for Congressmembers only and the other for members and their guests. The latter one, named after Ernest Petinaud, who served at the dining room for fifty years, is relatively small, though on the day we were visiting it was also rather empty – only two other parties were dining there (no congressmembers that we could identify, mind you). It has a simple, old fashioned elegance – with a rich crimson carpet, yellow walls, crystal light fixtures and a huge painting of the British surrender to Washington at Yorktown. The tables had white tablecloths and blue napkins, and looks exactly like the photos of it you can find online. The dining room has been operating at its current location since 1858, and I daresay it hasn’t changed much.

The Dining Room was offering a buffet lunch that day with table service for drinks. The offerings were limited but broad enough that most people should be able to find something they liked.

“Bean soup” has been a staple of both the Senate and the House dining rooms for many decades, and while I don’t like beans, I urged Mike to have it. As it happened, they had both a black bean soup and a white bean soup. He thought the white bean soup was very good, with the black bean one less so. I had the DIY salad, and found it pretty average.

Mike had the salmon and the Brussel sprouts. He found the salmon to be good, though not particularly remarkable. The Brussel sprouts were very good, but he is a fan of them in general.

I had the chicken thigh, and it was well seasoned and moist – better than what you’d expect from buffet food. The roasted potatoes were a bit dry, as they usually are.

My daughter, a vegetarian, tried both the rigatoni and the rice pilaf. She found both of them to be fine but, again, unremarkable.

My cousin Adriana, who was with us, raved about the food – but I think she might be less picky than we are.

But, of course, regardless of the food, eating at the Members Dining Room was an extremely cool experience. We felt the history of the room, the uniqueness of the experience, and are extremely grateful to have been invited to enjoy it.


Dining in DC: Sweet Home Café

February 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments 
Dining in DC: Notes from a Week in the Capital

Honest and delicious fare in the National American History Museum at the National Mall

The National Mall has a dearth of places to eat and what there are, food kiosks and cafés at the various museums, are grossly overpriced. Given what is, for all intents and purposes, a captive audience, I’m not entirely surprised. The museum restaurants, moreover, get pretty negative reviews, with the exception of those at the African American History Museum and at the Native American History Museum. We didn’t have a chance to try the latter, but after perusing the powerful exhibits at the former, we headed for lunch at Sweet Home Café. My cousin Adriana and her family, visiting from Argentina, joined us.

Despite its name, Sweet Home Café is neither a café nor homey. It’s basically a large cafeteria, busy with school groups and other tourists, without much charm to speak of. There are four food counters, each with different offerings. The “Agricultural South” counter offers fried and baked chicken and sides: mac & cheese, collard greens, sweet potato, potato salad, coleslaw and corn bread. The “Grill” station has fish, chicken tenders and a hot dog, as well as a fresh salad bar and French fries. A dessert counter offers a variety of desserts, including some which are definitely not African American and which are probably not made on the premises. I found the same dulce de leche cheesecake I had here at the Natural History Museum café. The final counter seems to offer a succession of “themed” dishes, which change weekly. When we were there, they were celebrating James Baldwin with a French-inspired menu.

After you order your food, and get drinks and perhaps a wrapped dessert from an open counter, you head to a checkout counter where you pay. I had read lots of reviews that the he checkers could be rude, and my cousin experienced this – they were curt and insulting. Apparently the checker she got was frustrated with their limited English. My husband and daughter didn’t have problems when they got food for themselves and me.

I didn’t take good pictures or notes of our meal there, so you will have to rely simply on my recollections.

I got the Daube de boeuf ($22.50) or beef stew, which came with one side – I chose mashed potatoes. It was a little on the cold side but otherwise delicious. The meat was tender and abundant, the sauce well balanced and the mashed potatoes perfectly made. It really exceeded my expectations flavor wise. The portion was large enough that I could share it with Mike, though neither of us were particularly hungry.

As mentioned, I also got a slice of the dulce de leche cheesecake ($8), which was quite tasty but not particularly remarkable (though good enough that my daughter got a slice of it the next day). Sodas were an incredible $4.70 each, though you could get a refill.

My cousin Adriana and her husband both got the pulled pork. This was a completely new dish for them and they both raved about it. I didn’t taste it myself, so I can’t vouch for whether it was a particularly good pulled pork, or whether my cousins were blown over by the novelty of the dish. But at least it was solid enough to delight newcomers to American cuisine.

No one should be surprised that there weren’t really good options for vegetarians – but you can order a plate with three sides (~12). My daughter went this route and got the baked macaroni and cheese, the roasted sweet potato and the corn bread, which came in a little loaf. She thought the mac & cheese was good, better than your Kraft staple. The sweet potato was surprisingly good, it was sweet and soft and she liked it quite a lot – even though she is not someone who usually gravitates to sweet potatoes. The cornbread, unfortunately, was very dry – but the flavor was there. The main problem with her side dishes is that they were all pretty cold.

In all, given the dearth of dining options in the area, Sweet Home Café is a good option for those visiting the museums and monuments in the area. It has relatively reduced hours of operation, 11 AM to 3 PM most days, so beware you get there in time.

Sweet Home Café
National Museum of African American History and Culture
1400 Constitution Ave. NW 
Washington, DC

Dining in DC: The Hamilton

February 14, 2025 / / 0 Comments 
Dining in DC: Notes from a Week in the Capital

This gorgeous restaurant near the White House actually has good food

The main reason for our trip to Washington DC this year was to meet up with my cousin Adriana and her family who were coming to the States for some tourism of their own. My husband loves Washington DC, and I love hanging out with Adriana, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity for both of us to get what we wanted from a vacation. So on our second day in DC, we met Adriana and her family at the People’s House and then made our way to The Hamilton, taking in the outside of the White House (fully adorned with snipers on the roof), on the way.

I had originally wanted to go to the Old Ebbitt Grill, a Washington DC institution popular with both tourists and politicos, but I found out that they don’t have tables for six within the restaurant itself, and large parties are confined to an atrium adjacent to the restaurant. The nearby The Hamilton is owned by the same company and promised to provide a more welcoming atmosphere. I’m glad I chose it. Not only was the restaurant outright gorgeous – so I got to impress Adriana -, but the prices were reasonable for such an upscale place and the food was very good.


The Hamilton is quite large and it has at least a couple of dining rooms, as well as a large bar. It seems to be a favorite spot for lobbyists and we overheard some of them making their machinations while we waited to be seated. The large booths were comfortable enough, and the service was as good as what I learned to expect in Washington (California has much to learn in this regard).

The menu was pretty broad and included your basic American fare plus some sushi. My cousin and her family weren’t particularly adventurous and they all got the Hamilton burger, which came with a “‘sunny-side up egg, bacon, B&B pickles, shredded lettuce, cheddar, Gruyère, garlic aioli, house made sesame brioche” ($21). They all said they loved it. I didn’t try them myself and they might have been being polite, but even their son ate most of his and children don’t tend to eat out of politeness alone.

I had the ragu americana & rigatoni ($26), which consisted of rigatoni and “red wine braised short rib, Nonna’s meatballs, Grana Padano.” At first, it just tasted like your run of the mill pasta dish, but it grew on me with every bite. The short rib sauce was comforting and with all the umami you expect from a tomato based sauce. The meatballs were delicious. I kept thinking and craving the dish for days to come. If I go back to DC, I’ll definitely head back to The Hamilton for it. Seriously, if you like pasta, you should try it.

My daughter had the garden sushi roll ($15), “avocado, carrots, cucumber, lettuce, miso dressing.” She overall liked it, though she wasn’t blown away with it. To be fair, she’s had a lot of great sushi out there (particularly in Argentina), so that might be a tall order. She did say she’d order it again.

Mike had the jumbo lump crab cake ($28). He thought it was absolutely delicious. The crab cake had lots of crabs and came apart easily, but it was perfectly seasoned. His only regret was that he didn’t order the double portion ($48).

I don’t remember us having dessert.

We managed to get lunch done in a little over an hour, and we quickly headed out to the Ford Theater to see where President Lincoln was assassinated. 

The Hamilton
600 14th Street N.W.,
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 787-1000

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