The Best Places in Washington

Jonathan Krinn's fine-dining tasting menu restaurant pulls vegetables from a garden steps from the kitchen, so what arrives on the plate might include a cucumber or basil variety you've never seen in a supermarket. The monthly menu changes as the garden does, and the open kitchen means you can hear the chef laughing while you work through it. Bring the kind of time and appetite that a slow, course-by-course evening demands.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

The name is a tribute to two grandmothers who believed life's best moments happen when everyone squeezes around the dinner table, and the dining room, with its exposed-beam rafters and rosemary focaccia drifting from the open kitchen, takes that mandate seriously. This is a neighborhood restaurant in the warm, come-as-you-are mold, where the menu leans into comfort food handled with care, pasta buried under braised brisket and meatballs being the kind of dish that turns a Tuesday into something.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

The fire blazing at the back of the dining room is the first thing worth noticing, and the plastic tablecloths are the last. Harvey's is a casual neighborhood restaurant in Falls Church that cooks with an ingredient-obsession more common to places charging three times as much. Fire-roasted duck breast arrives with blistered, chicharrón-like skin, and the server describes the bread pudding as "intimidating," which is accurate.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

A golden peacock greets you at the door before you've even seen a menu, which sets the tone for this ornate Indian restaurant in Herndon. Chandeliers, jewel-toned booths, and ornate parasols floating overhead make the dining room feel like a royal court that never got the memo about subtlety. The menu ranges across regional India, from street-snack starters to silky coconut curries. Bring a group and something of an appetite for theater.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

Finding this Italian osteria means navigating an office building in Alexandria, which is either charming or a mild ordeal depending on your mood. The menu leans into unexpected combinations: a filet mignon draped in cacio e pepe raviolo and shaved black truffle is the kind of dish that sounds like a dare and reads like a flex. A Nutella pizza piled with marshmallows closes things out on similarly committed terms.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

The sourdough under the roasted chicken isn't an afterthought; it sits in the pan and drinks up every drop of stock and butter until it becomes the point. Nancy Silverton's Georgetown Italian restaurant is a Stephen Starr co-production that landed as a full-blown scene, the kind where former presidents apparently just show up for dinner. The room runs loud and the pastas are homey, but the chicken alla diavola is the dish people are still talking about.

1. Washingtonian Chicken alla Diavola · Our Favorite Dishes of the Year in the DC Area

A cooking cart wheeled tableside for nearly every order is the signature move at this Italian restaurant in Vienna, where Roberto Donna has brought back guéridon service as a centerpiece rather than a novelty. The fettuccini alla parmigiana gets twisted in a parmesan wheel right in front of you, which is a lot of theater that happens to also produce very good pasta. The room is warm and neighborhood-beloved, without behaving like a neighborhood restaurant.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

Geometric tilework and honey-hued lighting set the scene at this casual Spanish tapas bar on Columbia Pike, where a pitcher of sangria and a spread of small plates is the whole plan. The kitchen leans into Moorish-influenced staples, bacon-wrapped dates, chickpea stew, mussels with charred bread for sopping. The room rewards lingering, and the crowd tends to take that as a personal challenge.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

The name nods to the signature dessert, but an Italian restaurant tucked into a Manassas strip center probably shouldn't lead with sweets. The chef works an open kitchen, sending out grilled romaine with a light Caesar dressing and biquinho peppers, housemade pasta, and a New York strip with wild mushrooms over cheesy polenta. The kind of neighborhood spot that rewards people who wander past the big-box anchors.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

A Thai restaurant in a Chantilly strip mall that has been quietly building a following on the strength of its spicy salads and curries, Sense of Thai takes heat seriously. The larb gai arrives bright with lime and chile, and the noodle soups, a coconut lamb khao soi among them, are the kind of thing people drive past closer options to get. Multiple locations now, but the cooking still has a point of view.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

The stracciatella cheese is pulled by hand, and the dough ferments for 72 hours before it ever sees a topping. This Roman-style pizzeria in Alexandria started as a food truck and now draws a wait for tables, which people seem willing to endure. Specials rotate fast, salads lean seasonal and serious, and the mainstay pies hold up without leaning on novelty. Order by QR code; the servers are worth talking to anyway.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

A restored vintage barn with chandeliers overhead sets the tone for this upscale casual restaurant inside the NOVA Live entertainment complex in Manassas. The menu is eclectic in the way that works, running from charred grilled octopus with romesco and chimichurri to dry-aged strip steak finished with harissa butter, and closing on espresso-stuffed beignets. Book ahead; it books out fast, and the surrounding music venue makes a natural second act.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

Clifton is small enough that you'll probably drive past it once before finding it, which makes this warm Italian trattoria feel like a proper discovery. Focaccia with olive oil arrives first, and the menu runs from Caesar salads and calamari through baked meatballs and stuffed gnocchi to a seven-layer chocolate cake that earns its place at the end. A raw bar adds a little ambition to what is otherwise honest, home-style cooking served with genuine care.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

Locals call it Tuskie's, which tells you most of what you need to know about a place this well-worn. It's a big, roomy American restaurant set inside a historic mill in downtown Leesburg, and the menu casts a wide net any night of the week. The Sunday buffet brunch is the main event: French toast, fried chicken, an omelet station, and a chafing dish of butterscotch bread pudding that the room quietly orbits.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

The lobby address inside The Watermark Hotel is a deliberate misdirect, because Wren is a Japanese-leaning restaurant that takes itself seriously. Sleek interiors and a lively bar ease you in, and then the kitchen starts sending out hamachi carpaccio with jalapeño-citrus soy and pork belly bao with all the right tucked-in extras. The room reads hotel-casual but the plates argue otherwise.

1. Northern Virginia Magazine The 50 Best Restaurants in Northern Virginia

A paper bowl at a picnic table outside a rural Virginia brewery is where this tasting trailer does its finest work. Sumac is exactly what it sounds like: a fire-cooked, hyper-local tasting menu served from a trailer parked in a field, with ingredients sourced within 150 miles. The menu shifts with whatever the land offers, and the New York Times put it on their 2024 Restaurant List, which seems about right for somewhere this quietly serious about a paper bowl.

1. The New York Times 2024 · The Restaurant List

1. Baltimore Magazine 2024 · Old-School Peruvian Chicken · Best of Baltimore

1. Baltimore Magazine 2024 · Old-School Peruvian Chicken · Best of Baltimore

1. Baltimore Magazine 2024 · Barbecue · Best of Baltimore