Photograph courtesy of Xi’an Famous Foods.
Club Sandwich
Eebee’s Corner Bar
Photograph by Brandy Holder.
Flawless construction is essential to a great club sandwich, and Emily Brown, proprietor of this cozy (and still wildly popular) Shaw bar was obsessed with getting it right. “Certain stacking leads to motion and sliding,” she says. Plus, how can you pre-salt the tomatoes without drying them, or toast the bread but never have it cut the roof of a customer’s mouth? It took Brown six months to nail the two-layer turkey-and-bacon sandwich, and it’s a masterpiece.
Buffalo Chicken Dip
Upstate FTW
location_onU St. Corridor
Scott Drewno hates ranch dressing. In fact, the chef and Syracuse native considered adding a surcharge for it at Upstate FTW, which serves the area’s best Buffalo wings. “Where I’m from, we eat Buffalo wings, we eat blue cheese,” he says. Cooler heads—meaning chef/partner Danny Lee—prevailed. (“Bro, we cannot do that.”) Drewno’s Buffalo dip is based on a recipe cribbed from his sister. Thanks to plenty of Frank’s hot sauce plus cream cheese, fontina, and, yes, ranch dressing, the dip has the perfect balance of richness, umami, and tang. What sets it apart, though, is that the chicken is not a shreddy afterthought you try to avoid. “Being cheffy, we use brined chicken thighs,” Drewno says.
Arancini
Rosselli
Photograph by Jonni Scott Photography.
Earlier this year, restaurateur Ashok Bajaj flipped his Italian restaurant Modena into . . . another Italian restaurant, called Rosselli. It’s the third Bajaj Italian dining room to occupy the Penn Quarter space. Let’s hope this one sticks, because besides a chicer vibe, you’ll find better, more creative snacks, roasts, and pastas. Take these creamy Sicilian risotto balls, bound with mascarpone and fried until they’re as golden as a Twinkie. They look ordinary enough, but take a bite and you’re hit with a surprising jolt of lemon. They’re an excellent accompaniment to the martinis, which, incidentally, are better, too.
Kinoko Nabe
Uchi
One witheringly hot June night, I was jammed into a table at the ever-crowded Japanese hot spot Uchi. The waits between courses were so comically long that, finally, the kitchen sent out this gratis plate of mushrooms as a mea culpa. The soft, tender mushrooms were brightened up with tentsuyu, a light, salty-sweet sauce, then ladled over koshihikari rice and topped with a runny egg yolk. It was not a dish that screamed summer, but it’s the one I’d most want to come back for.
Gumbo
Catahoula
Photograph courtesy of Saltbridge Strategies.
Catahoula, the six-month-old riverfront brasserie in Navy Yard, is a tribute to Cajun and Creole cooking. And as such, chef Thomas Malz is deeply serious about his gumbo—and especially the fat-and-flour roux that serves as its foundation. “I was taught to make a proper roux with great ceremony,” he says. In the kitchen at New Orleans’s Cochon, he observed the process for several weeks before he was allowed to attempt it himself. The dedication paid off—I haven’t found a better gumbo in the city. The rich, dark stew, fortified with andouille sausage and tasso ham, has a lingering, not overpowering, spice. It’s tempered with long-grain rice and a spoonful of potato aïoli. How do Malz’s up-north cooks get the roux just right? Color-matching. They each carry an old penny in their chef coats to remind them of the perfect shade.
Fugazzeta
No Regrets Pizza Co.
location_onNorth Bethesda
There’s something wonderfully simple about white pizza. Which also means that in the wrong hands, it can be extremely boring. This pizza shop specializes in three styles of pie: Roman, New York, and “deck-oven artisanal,” each of which starts with three-day-fermented dough. Its fugazzeta, though, nods to Argentina. The puffy, sauceless squares are generously laden with mozzarella, Asiago, onions, and chili oil, yet never get soggy. “What started as a special,” says co-owner Nick Framarini, “earned a permanent spot on our menu almost immediately.”
Brioche-Stuffed Chicken
Maison Bar à Vins
Photograph courtesy of Giovanna Benette.
This Deco-cool Adams Morgan brownstone spot from Lutèce chef Matt Conroy billed itself as a wine bar when it opened last winter. The kind of place you’d wander into for, say, a late-night Chenin Blanc. But I prefer it for late-night French small plates. (The kitchen stays open until 1 am on weekends.) Chef de cuisine Jason Chavenson’s offerings change constantly, but one fixture is a dish that tastes both nostalgic and aspirational: carved slices of perfectly roasted Amish chicken breast ringed with crispy copper skin. Inside each slice is an herby brioche stuffing, and a jus made from the rest of the bird is pooled on the plate. “The one nonnegotiable for including a chicken dish on the menu was that it needed to be incredible,” Conroy says. Mission accomplished.
Buttermilk Biscuit
Buford’s Biscuits
Photograph courtesy of Buford’s Biscuits.
Buford’s Biscuits, the folksy Leesburg breakfast/lunch spot, serves up precariously towering fried-chicken sandwiches. But I prefer the cathead biscuits—the name alludes to their size—solo. There’s no trickery here: The secret to the traditional biscuits is not over- or under-mixing them, says co-owner Charles Schech. Still, only a few Buford’s cooks are allowed to make them. The best accent is one of two “flights”: either a trio of jams made from fruit gathered at the Leesburg farmers market or three butters sweetened with honey, maple, or cinnamon.
Spicy and Sour Lamb Dumplings
Xian Famous Foods
In 2007, Anthony Bourdain visited—then showcased on No Reservations— a basement hand-ripped-noodle stall in Flushing, New York. Since then, the family-run business has blossomed into more than a dozen NYC locations, plus a delivery business and restaurant in Clarendon. (A Rockville ghost kitchen is on the way.) The fat, chewy Shaanxi-style noodles deserve their hype, but don’t sleep on these dumplings, which are boiled and overstuffed with ground lamb. You can get them drenched in a vinegary sauce, but the chili-red, cilantro-flecked broth is even better.
Passionfruit Doughnut
Rose Ave Bakery
Photograph by Flavy Calumba.
The top-selling confection at this Woodley Park bakery is a fat, round doughnut piped with thick passionfruit curd. The doughnut itself is so pillowy and crunchy with granulated sugar that it would be excellent on its own. But it plays beautifully with the lush curd, which chef/owner Rose Nguyen perfected when she started her pandemic-born business. (“I felt like we could put it on anything,” she says.) Fancy doughnuts don’t always land, but this one does.
Walnut Shrimp
Astoria
There are more interesting things than walnut shrimp on the menu at this beloved Dupont cocktail destination/Sichuan restaurant. It almost reads like kid food. But in between bites of fiery mapo tofu and cumin lamb and dan-dan noodles, a plate of fat, beautifully fried shrimp with creamy honey and candied walnuts is about as comforting as it gets.
This article appears in the October 2026 issue of Washingtonian.
Executive Food Editor/Critic
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
