Developer JBG Smith has lined up its roster of restaurants for its remake of Crystal City’s Water Park, focused on small, locally-owned businesses, with a total of 11 restaurant and bar concepts.
Nine of the food operators will occupy 300-foot kiosks that will line Crystal Drive. In addition to dining amenities for Crystal City workers and residents, the kiosks also serve as incubators for up-and-coming restaurants.
Those chosen are a diverse and eclectic blend of cuisines from emerging local, minority- and women-owned businesses.
JBG Smith has also brought on Atlanta-based STHRN Hospitality to anchor a 1,400-square-foot, full-service restaurant that will be set into a hillside at Water Park. Water Bar will have a raw-bar-focused menu, and an open-air terrace on top of a fountain and water wall.
STHRN will also operate a New York-style pizza restaurant called Crush Pizza.
The 1.6-acre park is likely to draw not only National Landing’s growing number of Amazon HQ2 employees, but Crystal City’s growing residential population.
JBG Smith alone is set to deliver more than 5,000 new apartment and condo units, with almost 1,600 of them already under construction.
Amazon, currently occupying several leased buildings owned by JBG Smith in Crystal City, is scheduled to open its 2.1 million-square-foot headquarters that will be occupied by its current 8,000 National Landing employees in June.
Water Park will also include a performance stage, public art and a trailhead building adjacent to the Mt. Vernon Trail.
Water Park is one of two restaurant-centric redevelopments JBG Smith has in the works.
At 2121 Crystal Dr., it has begun work on what will be Dining in the Park, and will feature a restaurant from Chef Enrique Limbardo of D.C. restaurant Seven Reasons and Michelin-starred Imperfecto.
The 5,600-square-foot restaurant will be named Surreal.
The restaurant will have year-round outdoor seating, and will be at the center of a one-acre park. Limbardo opened his newest restaurant, The Saga, in D.C.’s West End on May 2.
The lineup of Water Park food tenants:
- Brij, a D.C. wine bar and cafe which uses some of its proceeds for causes for single mothers, the unhoused and the LGBTQ community.
- Bubbie’s Plant Burger, from the operators of D.C.’s fast casual Asian restaurant Pow Pow
- Cracked Eggery, the egg-centric restaurant in Cleveland Park and Shaw
- DC Dosa, an Indian street food concept at Union Market
- Dolci Gelati, the D.C. gelato shop with several locations
- Falafel Inc., with a restaurant in Georgetown
- PhoWheels, which currently operates a Vietnamese food truck in D.C.
- Tiki Thai, a Reston restaurant with Thai and Polynesian food
- Queen Mother’s, with a fried chicken restaurant on Columbia Pike
