Gastronomic IMMUNITY

Washington, DC's ascendant dining scene prepares to seat a second Trump administration

- Nate Freeman

ON A WEDNESDAY in late November, Keith McNally, the king of New York restaurants, was somewhat improbably in the outer reaches of Washington, DC.

He was getting ready to open the world's second Minetta Tavern, some 90 years after the first one debuted in the heart of Greenwich Village, in a neighborhood that has provided much of the District of Columbia with its meats for nearly 100 years. The area, Union Market, has been building since those "cool" Obama years, and the last decade saw the arrival of chic pour-over purveyors and high-rise luxury apartments.

The second Minetta Tavern possesses the same magic-glow, backlit, clubby feel of the original, with one crucial difference. The framed pictures at the Manhattan Minetta feature artists, musicians, and stars of screen and stage.

In DC, it's all about the politicians.

"I knew I wanted to bring my most serious restaurant here," says McNally, who got an apartment nearby.

The steakhouse is just one of the anticipated restaurants to come to the nation's capital from New York or LA restaurateurs in a busy and strange spell for the capital's fine-dining scene.

The powerful restaurateur Stephen Starr approached Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery fame to partner on her first East Coast restaurant, in the heart of Georgetown. In 2023, José Andrés opened a version of his The Bazaar at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, which had settled in the Old Post Office near the White House the year before. Kwame Onwuachi, the chef behind Tatiana at Lincoln Center, recently launched Dōgon at the Salamander hotel.

All of these restaurants, years in the making, will now stare down a phenomenon unique to the District of Columbia: that quadrennial fit of unease brought on by the exit of one president and the arrival of another. Even under regular circumstances, these transitions can present vibe shifts of the highest order.