Centrolina
CITY GUIDES | WASHINGTON, D.C.
Washington, D.C.’s Best Restaurants Keep Moving the Goalposts
Just when this list feels settled, two more great restaurants open in the capital.
By Eric Barton
Updated July 12, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Washington has become one of those places where I arrive with a plan and almost immediately abandon it.
On my latest pilgrimage, I went back to a few old favorites, then found the usual trouble: a Brazilian bar in Adams Morgan, a 25-seat Nikkei restaurant near Eastern Market, and several reasons to move things around on this list.
The city’s restaurant scene keeps changing. So does this guide.
Here are the 15 best restaurants in Washington, D.C., right now.
Albi
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This Michelin-starred hearth in Navy Yard is where Middle Eastern tradition meets DC swank, like these coal-roasted mushrooms with black garlic and an oozy, decadent confit egg yolk. The kubaneh bread service – served with toum whipped into cloud-like submission – should be classified as emotional support carb.
Best for: A hearth-fired dinner in Navy Yard that starts with kubaneh bread service
Bar Cana
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Bar Cana knows exactly what it wants to be: a Brazilian bar in Adams Morgan built around caipirinhas, vinyl, and food substantial enough to keep the night going. That means pão de queijo, hearts of palm, moqueca, and lamb picanha, preferably ordered before someone suggests another round as though it were an entirely new idea.
Best for: Caipirinhas, Brazilian cooking, and vinyl in Adams Morgan
Centrolina
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Chef Amy Brandwein makes the kind of handmade pasta that can derail your plans to order lightly before you’ve finished looking at the menu. She’s an eight-time James Beard Award nominee, and Centrolina was named a 2026 semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant. Then there’s the adjoining market, where cheese, wine, prepared foods, and Italian pantry goods make leaving empty-handed seem unnecessarily disciplined.
Best for: Handmade pasta and an Italian market worth browsing afterward
Karizma
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Chef Ajay Kumar gives diners two ways into his modern Indian cooking at the same Mount Vernon Square address. Karizma serves à la carte, while Karma offers four-, six-, and nine-course tasting menus. The signature Nirvana salad contains 37 ingredients and arrives with tableside assembly, which should settle any lingering question about whether Kumar is inclined to keep things simple.
Best for: Modern Indian cooking, from à la carte to nine courses
L’Ardente
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L’Ardente is what happens when you give a Roman trattoria a glam makeover and send it out for cocktails with a fashion editor. The lasagna is a 40-layer architectural marvel, the pizza comes blistered and bougie, and the whole place glows like it’s lit for a magazine shoot. It’s Italian, yes—but unapologetically D.C., where the style is half the point.
Best for: A big Italian night built around the forty-layer lasagna
Mallard
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At Mallard, chef Hamilton Johnson reimagines the Southern food he grew up with—less Sunday supper, more South Carolina on sabbatical in Paris. Think buttermilk biscuits with serious swagger, hushpuppies that flirt with fine dining, and a duck confit that could make your grandmother reconsider her gumbo. It’s Southern comfort, sure—but sharper, smarter, and unafraid to show off a little.
Best for: Modern Southern cooking when biscuits and hushpuppies are non-negotiable
Maru San
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The line outside Maru San tends to form before dinner, which is useful information at a 25-seat restaurant where most of the counter is reserved for walk-ins. James Beard Award-winning chef Carlos Delgado and chef Simon Lam build the meal around Nikkei cooking, pairing Japanese technique with the Peruvian flavors Delgado grew up with in Callao. There’s an a la carte menu: hand rolls filled with crab, scallop, or spicy tuna; flounder tiradito; octopus with olive sauce. Or if you’re lucky, four seats each night are set aside for a 15-course tasting menu for $115, for anyone who sees waiting in line as merely the beginning of the commitment.
Best for: Nikkei hand rolls and one of D.C.’s hardest-won counter seats
Minetta Tavern DC
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Keith McNally’s Gotham institution landed in Union Market like a velvet glove slap – red banquettes, that infamous Black Label burger, and bartenders who’ll school you on proper Vesper construction. The upstairs Lucy Mercer lounge does things with champagne that should be illegal in three states.
Best for: A burger-and-martini dinner in a red-banquette room designed for lingering
MITA
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At MITA, chefs Miguel Guerra and Tatiana Mora build their tasting menus around vegetables, then bring in enough smoke, acid, fermentation, and spice to make the phrase “vegetable-forward” feel inadequate. Their cooking moves across Latin America without treating the continent as one broad flavor profile, an approach that helped earn the restaurant a Michelin star.
Best for: Michelin-starred Latin American tasting menus centered on vegetables
Moon Rabbit
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Moon Rabbit, now in downtown, serves the kind of meal that makes you stop mid-bite and reassess your priorities. The canh chua, roasted black cod, rests in a tomato-tamarind broth that managed to be both tart and comforting; like many things here, it tastes like a childhood memory re-engineered into fine dining that’s never fussy. And the fish sauce caramel with the avocado sorbet pictured above? It lands briny, sweet, and way more elegant than it has any right to be, just like Moon Rabbit.
Best for: A Vietnamese meal that lands briny, tart, and memorable in all the right ways
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Osteria Mozza
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A seat at Osteria Mozza’s marble mozzarella bar comes with a clear view of several things you’ll wish you had ordered. Nancy Silverton’s Georgetown restaurant brings together handmade pasta, wood-fired cooking, Italian wine, and dishes such as the orecchiette with fennel sausage. Sharing is possible, technically.
Best for: Handmade pasta and a seat at the mozzarella bar
Rye Bunny
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Jon Sybert and Jill Tyler closed their Michelin-starred Tail Up Goat after nearly a decade, then stayed in the same Adams Morgan address and rebuilt the whole idea. Rye Bunny—named for their two enormous rescue dogs—uses counter service to keep things more casual, though the cooking still shows its pedigree in anchovy-topped milk bread, wild greens ravioli, chermoula-sauced rockfish, and a soy-marinated pork chop. Order at the counter, settle beneath the quilts and folk art, and trust that someone involved will eventually show you a dog photo.
Best for: Ambitious comfort food without the fine-dining formality
SOST
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SOST is a combination restaurant, café, rooftop, and vinyl room built around the Black and African diaspora, with a menu that moves from Grandma’s suya and lentil sambusas to whole branzino with Senegalese rof sauce, harissa creamy salmon, and berbere-braised chicken with jollof rice and pikliz. Start upstairs with dinner, then follow the building’s natural progression toward cocktails, records, dancing, and a night that should definitely not end early.
Best for: African diaspora cooking followed by cocktails and dancing
Xiquet
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Chef Danny Lledó draws on his Valencian roots at Xiquet, where the Michelin-starred tasting menu moves through seafood, live-fire cooking, and rice dishes made with Senia rice. Pay attention when the socarrat arrives. The crisp layer at the bottom is meant to be scraped up, not surrendered politely to whoever is holding the spoon.
Best for: Valencian tasting menus and properly crisped socarrat
Yellow
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Michael Rafidi has made Yellow’s pastry case its own form of morning decision fatigue. The Union Market café turns out za’atar and labneh croissants, chocolate seven-spice cruffins, and baklava kouign-amanns, then shifts after dark to kebabs and cocktails. Breakfast and dinner here are different enough to justify two visits in one day, which is a useful thing to tell yourself.
Best for: Levantine pastries by day and kebabs after dark
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