But many new restaurants, opening in small storefronts, are also bringing fresh life to residential neighborhoods, where relatively low overhead enables creative risks. The city, according to one recent s tudy, is undergoing the most intense gentrification in the country, displacing many residents. Its personality lies in its multiculturalism: The most powerful force driving the critical reassessments are restaurants from immigrant and first-generation American chefs and restaurateurs, many of whom cut their teeth in the surrounding suburbs.ĭoing business here isn’t as cheap as it used to be. While new places like the Dabney join old favorites like Johnny’s Half-Shell to provide the country’s strongest collection of restaurants serving seafood-intensive Mid-Atlantic cuisine, the very absence of a dominant local culinary style makes the city particularly hospitable to new voices and innovations. Washington’s population has long been predominantly African-American, and the district (just to give one example) has the largest population of Ethiopians outside Ethiopia. The complexities that arise from being a nexus of immigration, power and wealth have traditionally been reflected even in the city’s expense-account haunts, notably those operated by the Indian-American restaurateur Ashok Bajaj, the Spanish-American chef José Andrés and, before them, the revered French chefs Jean-Louis Palladin and Michel Richard. The vibrant scene now attracting attention rose on a foundation built by members of a culinary deep state, and a diverse constellation of restaurants that have flourished here. Truth is, District of Columbia restaurants are far more interesting than that, and have been for a long time. In this view, the strivers coursing through the capital’s halls of power represent the entire population luxury, status and predictability rule in the kitchen, and the best meal to be had is a dry-aged steak. But it still chafes under a reputation that has bedeviled its dining scene for decades: that it has little culinary excitement or any distinctive identity. In the end, the city won that honor, and has since drawn similar recognition from other food-world arbiters, even getting its own Michelin Guide. “Then he told me to get out of his office. It was a difficult argument to make, even to the magazine’s editor, Adam Rapoport, a Washington native. WASHINGTON - In 2016, Andrew Knowlton, then the restaurant editor of Bon Appétit, proposed that the magazine name Washington its restaurant city of the year.
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