Washington eats like the capital of an immigrant nation: half-smokes drowned in chili, Ethiopian doro wat on Ninth Street, Chesapeake blue crabs steamed dockside. Three days through its markets, brewpubs and cocktail alleys.
Washington's oldest continuously operating public market, trading since 1873. Queue at the Market Lunch counter for blueberry buckwheat pancakes and a crab cake sandwich, then browse the South Hall butchers and cheesemongers. Tue–Fri 7am–7pm.
A 1930s wholesale warehouse reborn as a 40-stall food hall. Rappahannock oysters shucked to order, Takorean kimchi tacos, Puddin' gumbo and Buffalo & Bergen egg creams share one long counter-lined room. Open daily 8am–8pm.
Serving since 1958, this is where the half-smoke belongs to DC: a coarse half-pork, half-beef sausage split, griddled and buried in chili, mustard and onions. It stayed open through the 1968 riots under curfew to feed the neighbourhood.
Brewpub in a former pool hall where Duke Ellington shot billiards as a teenager, now pouring farmhouse saisons and hoppy ales beneath a Technicolor mural. Kitchen sends out smoked trout dip, hush puppies and burgers.
Owned by a collective of family farms in North Dakota, this scratch kitchen two blocks from the White House turns out chicken and waffles, skillet cornbread and beignets. Brunch runs all morning across two floors.
Anchor of the U Street Ethiopian corridor since 1997, home to the largest Ethiopian diaspora outside Addis Ababa. Order the veggie combo or doro wat and scoop it with spongy injera — no cutlery. Honey wine arrives in a berele flask.
DC's oldest saloon, founded 1856 and now sitting beside the Treasury. The marble raw bar shucks Atlantic and Pacific varieties by the dozen, and oyster happy hour runs 3–5pm daily with bivalves at roughly half price.
Aaron Silverman's narrow Eighth Street dining room, named the best new restaurant in America in 2014. The pork-and-lychee sausage salad has never left the menu since opening in 2013; the format is a compact tasting sequence.
A Jewish-ish deli in a bubblegum-pink rowhouse on Georgia Avenue. Wood-fired bagels get griddled and stacked with brisket, egg and hot honey — the Sun City and the Gleneagles lead a short, fiercely defended menu.
The oldest continuously operating open-air fish market in the United States, trading since 1805. Moored barges sell Chesapeake blue crabs steamed in Old Bay by the half-bushel, plus shrimp, clams and shucked oysters. Daily 8am–9pm.
A brewery inside the 1919 Boilermaker Shops of the Washington Navy Yard, with twenty taps poured beside the fermentation tanks. The range runs from Lost Weekend pale ale to barrel-aged stouts and sour blends.
Derek Brown's James Beard-winning cocktail bar hidden in a Shaw alley, split into three rooms: the open-air Punch Garden, the walk-in Spirits Library, and a 14-seat Tasting Room running a set drinks-and-bites menu.