Upper Northwest

A gourmet Italian restaurant with a big focus on Neapolitan style pizza. With popular food and top-notch service, the waits can be long, but make no mistake, this is D.C.'s most popular pizzeria for a reason. If the noise bothers you, request a table in the upstairs dining room.

Voted best BBQ in the city numerous times. Traditional pit BBQ. Offers many traditional southern sides like homemade style mac and cheese and collard greens. Also offered grilled vegetarian options. Wide selection of small production hot sauces and BBQ sauces. The signature dish is the pulled pork.

Another contender for D.C.'s best pizza is this New York style Italian deli. The pizza is 100% authentic New York style and done well the subs are great too. No tables or delivery—carry out only. Whole pizza or by the slice. (There's another location in Bethesda too.

A French-American bistro in a city short on bistro cuisine is a nice find. The service is incredibly friendly, and the familiar bistro favorites are quite good, from the french onion soup to Boeuf Bourguignon, braised veal, pastas, and salads. At lunch they also offer inexpensive wood-fired pizzas from next-door Pizze. In a pretty old townhouse, it's equally amenable to a romantic dinner or a casual lunch.

One roll of sushi costs $1.25-3, but it's actually good! There really isn't anything else you need to know, but the atmosphere, particularly for lunch, could well trick you into thinking you were in a little local dive in Osaka.

A traditional German restaurant not far from the Embassy, serving the best German food you will find in the D.C. metro area. Schnitzel is the specialty!

Indique Heights specializes in southern Indian cuisine, usually crafted into something just a little unique, and serves its customers in a really cool, attractive space it's a great date restaurant. The cocktail lounge is also beautiful, and makes for a good date even if you aren't eating here. The bottom line is that this is the place to eat if you are in Friendship Heights.

A popular sushi place both with American University students who get a 10% discount and the nearby Japanese Embassy. The designer rolls are great, as are the non-sushi items on the menu. The decor is pretty different from what you'd expect at a sushi place—there's nothing fashionable about it, it's just a comfortable neighborhood eatery.

Authentic Provençal cuisine in a very cute restaurant across the street from the Uptown Theater.

A new arrival and something of an instant hit, this restaurant just north of Georgetown serves high-end southern cuisine, and is also a great place to relax and socialize at the bar, or privately with friends. By D.C. standards, the clientele is wildly conservative!

Head chef, owner, and OCD perfectionist Frank Ruta formerly head chef at the White House serves New American cuisine boasting simple design and high quality ingredients. Palena is hardly the only restaurant around with such a formula, but the execution here is exceptional. If you are feeling scared away by the big price tags on the main dining room's tasting menu, visit for a night at the front cafe/bar, where Ruta has turned a routine bar menu into delightful haute cuisine. The roast chicken $13 and hamburgers $10 with a bit of Kobe beef and a truffled mayonaisse are great deals despite their modest size, and are famous in the city, as is the fries platter, which includes the ever-intriguing fried lemon wedges. And all tasting menus can be ordered a la carte from the cafe as well.

This is the one restaurant in the Palisades neighborhood that is truly famous throughout the city. Cuisine is New American seafood although there are some great non-seafood entries as well. The seafood is incredibly fresh, and the dishes are inventive (like an arctic char with green mole, plantains and "citrus braised pork belly." The adjoining seafood market has some of the highest quality fish in the city.

Washingtonians like their Belgian mussels and pomme frite, and this particular restaurant serves them well, particularly those fries.

Makoto

Makoto is an experience. It's a tiny, very classy Japanese restaurant, with a strict set of rules designed to combat the general breakdown of Western societal mores: conservative dress code think non-casual business attire, shoes off at the door, no cell phones. The food and attentive service are outstanding, with attention to detail befitting a great Japanese restaurant.

New Heights is a great place for a night of complex, inventive American cuisine. Don't skip dessert. The bar has an excellent selection of gins, which is refreshing, given the number of establishments around the city with great menus of cocktails or whiskies.