DC named Bon Appétit’s restaurant city of the year

WASHINGTON — This year, Washington, D.C., is Bon Appétit magazine’s restaurant city of the year.

The designation comes just after the national food magazine named three D.C. restaurants — Bad Saint, The Dabney and Tail Up Goat — on its list of the 50 finalists for America’s best new restaurants.

One reason D.C. rose to the top is because of its growing number of neighborhood restaurants “sprouting up in areas that you would not have imagined ten years ago — neighborhoods like Shaw, Columbia Heights, Barracks Row, and Petworth,” the magazine says.

Editor Andrew Knowlton slathers on the compliments about the city’s diverse dining scene, run by fresh and innovative chefs who are more concerned about their creative passion than they are about what they think the masses might want.

“There’s an energy and excitement surrounding all the new places that is palpable,” Knowlton writes. “D.C. is bubbling with momentum. You go into one place, and you hear about another exciting spot just down the street.”

Bon Appétit’s list of the 50 best new restaurants will be trimmed to the 10 best new restaurants on a list released Aug.16.

Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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