How to Eat and Drink Your Way through Washington, D.C.

Before you go

Two Food- and Drink-Filled Days in Washington, D.C.

Day 1: Space ice cream, an afternoon beer crawl, and a Vietnamese feast

Morning

• Sit down to a white tablecloth breakfast at The Lafayette, in the lobby of the Hay-Adams hotel, a mainstay of cultural and political power players since 1884. As the piano plays, enjoy their signature oatmeal soufflé.
• From the Hay-Adams, cross the street to stroll past the White House and along the National Mall until you reach the National Air & Space Museum, where you can see the Wright Brothers’ 1903 Flyer, Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit and the Apollo 11 command module, and a light-up model of Star Trek’s original starship Enterprise. But you’re really here for the assortment of freeze-dried ice cream in the gift shop and, at the museum’s Mars Cafe, a Yoda-inspired whipped cream matcha drink.
• Make your way to Chinatown to get lost in the 9,000 square feet of Da Hsin Trading Company, which sells a madcap mix of teas, sweets, snacks, and baijiu (the world’s most popular liquor). A stalwart of ever-changing Chinatown, it’s been under the ownership of Richard Chiang since 1980 and is so revered it has a presence in the Smithsonian’s archives.

Afternoon

• From Chinatown, head to Planet Word, a free museum celebrating the power of language. After testing your accent or knowledge of profanity and seeing classic books come alive thanks to digital projections, head downstairs to Immigrant Food — a restaurant of rotating dishes all inspired by and made by immigrants, an ethos its owners have dubbed “gastroadvocacy.” Dig into a Greek rainbow salad, Venezuelan taqueños, West African gumbo, or a simple bowl of Spanish gazpacho.
• You’ll work off some of the day’s calories — but quaff many more — along the Metropolitan Beer Trail, which is best explored on a Capital Bikeshare bike after getting a free “digital passport” from the trail’s website (the passport can be redeemed for discounts at the locations). Go hard on all 12 stops if you dare (the trail starts at Wunder Garten near Union Station and stretches to Right Proper Brewing Co. in Brookland) or pick and choose your own hopping flight of fancy.
• You’ll need a little sustenance after all that beer. Although it won an Italian award for the best wine selection outside of Italy, A. Litteri also sells compact gourmet sandwiches that worship at the Italian altars of meat and cheese. Grab an Italian Classic with capicola, Genoa salami, mortadella, prosciuttini, provolone, lettuce, tomato, onion, hot peppers, Italian dressing, and seasoning (no substitutions allowed) and enjoy it as you wander across the street to Union Market to browse take-home essentials like Salt & Sundry’s handmade ceramics, Jungle & Loom’s vintage glassware, or District Cutlery’s Japanese knives.

Evening

• Take your pick of the most surreal locations for happy hour: beers and booze in front of a Gutenberg Bible at the Libraries of Congress (Thursdays only) or a champagne tour at the O Museum in the Mansion, a chaotic super-mansion of secret passageways where everything is for sale — a copy of The War For Kindness for $12, a vintage pinball machine for $650, Janet Jackson’s $3,000 Christian Louboutin heels (or her $2,500 Dior heels if you’re feeling frugal) — except for the room where Rosa Parks lived for years.
• Level up with a cocktail — based on a recipe shared in a 1763 letter from Benjamin Franklin to Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin — at Jose Andrés’ Bazaar at the Waldorf-Astoria. (And while you’re at it, try Andrés’ gooey take on a miniature Philly cheesesteak). Or go for oysters and cocktails at Old Ebbitt Grill, which dates back to 1856.
• Finally have a proper dinner at Moon Rabbit, chef Kevin Tien’s upscale Vietnamese love letter. It’s been a long road for Tien, who grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, the capital of Cajun county. He established a national reputation not just from his James Beard Award nominations but also by co-founding Chefs Stopping AAPI Hate. Inventive dishes—like mochi beignets with freshwater eel and boudin noir with baby octopus — mash together his Cajun and Vietnamese roots. Make sure to save room for Susan Bae’s ever-inventive desserts — like corn mousse with gjetost gelato and coffee granita.
• Unravel your night and your tongue at Eaton hotel’s speakeasy-style Allegory, which bills itself as “the first bar to blend art, literature, social good, craft cocktails, and hospitality.” Their current narrative-driven menu, “Banned in DC,” was two years in the making and is a futuristic telling of Alice in Wonderland through the lens of Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to desegregate a school in 1960. The cocktails — like Black Broadway, made with cognac, shochu, chicory, and cantaloupe — tie into the story, and the physical menu (more like a book) features original art by Katie Miller. Whatever you order, make sure to ask for the drink “with bubbles.” Trust me.

Day 2: Sushi-style bagel sandwiches, a taste of Black history, and a jazzy evening

Morning

• Start your second day at Call Your Mother, a laid-back deli in the Yours Truly hotel. Try one of their cinnamon roll babka muffins and then devour the sushi-style Hidden Cove bagel sandwich, with smoked salmon, mashed avocado, cucumber, seaweed flakes, and shredded carrots. Wash it all down with a strawberry white chocolate latte.
• Stroll through Dupont Circle and up Connecticut Avenue to repent from that gluttony with meditative teas from Teaism (you can also have some mailed home) and devour books down the street at Kramers, an independent bookseller with its own spirited scenester cafe. Then pop into the family-owned Chocolate Chocolate to pick up souvenir national monuments made of chocolate.
• Rest your legs and pay your respects at Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, a glass box of a restaurant on 17th Street that was celebrated as an American classic by the James Beard Foundation for its vitality to the city’s LGBTQ scene (D.C. has the nation’s highest percentage of LGBT adults). Warning: the tea is hot.

Afternoon

• For a taste of Black history, head to Sweet Home Cafe in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which has four stations representing regional offerings, including a barbecue station and an “agricultural south” station featuring fried chicken, collard greens, and mac n cheese. The museum itself is an intense experience, best begun in the basement with an unflinching exploration of slavery and the moral price America paid to develop its crops. One of the museum’s novel moments comes at an interactive lunch counter sit-in, where visitors can use choose-your-own-adventure touchscreens to decide how they would’ve responded in the Civil Rights Era.
• Afterwards take a bike ride past living Black history, including the nation’s oldest soul food restaurant, Florida Avenue Grill, open since 1944. Sit in the “shotgun booth” where the owner defended his business with a shotgun during citywide riots in 1968 and refresh with a glass of “triple drink” (an iced tea, lemonade, fruit punch combo).
• Cycle on to the U Street corridor, a hub of Black excellence anchored by Ben’s Chili Bowl — not just an institution, but a community center bustling with conversation and visionaries. Ask for Peaches, who has been seasoning and stirring the chili for more than 40 years. And don’t miss its famous outdoor mural, painted by a local legend, Aniekan Udofia.
• Pedal over to Larry’s, which has been serving homemade ice cream since 1985. Flavors vary from decadent oatmeal cinnamon chocolate chunk to sumptuous surprises like Fred & Ginger (sweet cream, peach, brandy, and ginger). The secret, according to Esen Cencki, the Turkish woman who now runs Larry’s, is her French recipe that calls for 17 percent butter fat in her sweet cream.

Evening

• Feed your conscience at Albi (Arabic for “my heart”) and its exquisite Palestinian dishes, which have earned Palestinian-American Ohio-born chef Michael Rafidi endless awards, including the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Chef of the Year in 2024 and a Michelin star the same year. Start with embered oysters in arak butter and trout roe or sharp kibbeh naya salad with smoked tomato, before moving on to juicy lamb kebabs served on swords. Even the beer is imported from the West Bank.
• Wrap up your visit with cocktails at Blues Alley Jazz, the nation’s oldest continuously operating jazz supper club (open since 1965). It’s known as “the house that Dizzy built,” as in Gillespie, and kids as young as 10 are welcome with an adult. The menu pops with punny beers (Brother Thelonius, a Belgian-style abbey ale) all the way up to bottles of champagne. Whether you’re drinking away your sorrows or drinking life to the lees, no trip to D.C. would be complete without jazz’s reminder that life may be difficult but a moment of joy can defeat an onslaught of grievance.

If you have three days

All of the above, but add…

• Explore Alexandria’s Old Town, which is accessible by subway from D.C. A tavern since 1770, Gadsby’s offers some colonial-era dishes like cock-a-leekie pie for lunch and George Washington’s Favorite (cherry-glazed roasted duck with corn pudding and scalloped potatoes) for dinner. Squarely in the town’s historic district — dating back to 1749 — Gadsby’s abuts Market Square and its namesake farmers’ market. A block away is the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, which dates to 1792. Famous customers include Martha Washington and Elisha Dick (George Washington’s doctor). Pro tip: don’t eat or drink anything — not that you could; many of the bottles are filled with their original contents.