You may have noticed that I recently visited Washington, D.C. I’ve mentioned some great meals that we experienced so now I want to go into a little more detail and share some photos of most of our meals. I think you’ll like it :)
I had been perusing the various restaurants near our hotel in the weeks before we departed for D.C. to find a good spot for dinner our first night and there were several to choose from! That is one reason I chose the Washington Plaza hotel for our stay. For that first night I chose Estadio because it was within walking distance of our hotel and because it’s a Spanish tapas place. It also gets great ratings on TripAdvisor and is currently #38 of 2,703 restaurants listed on TripAdvisor for the D.C. area. The food was very good even if it was a bit spendy for what you get. I was a bit disappointed in the tortilla de patatas or as I prefer, tortilla española. Oh, it was good, but I was expecting the same tortilla española that you get in Spain. Estadio puts their own stamp on it and they really don’t have to. It was good, it just wasn’t what I wanted. We also got their jamón variety platter, boquerones, manchego cheese and olives all of which are pictured in the following gallery. The bread that accompanied several dishes was very fresh and quite delicious. There were little slices of sweet breads that came with the cheese, also very yummy. We also ordered shrimp and that was really too much for us. Probably should have skipped the shrimp but it was very tasty! We took the rest of the ham and manchego as well as the olives back to our hotel’s mini fridge. And that package served as snacks for the next several days.
Another reason I chose our hotel was because it gave me the option to include breakfast with our room. I did that and I’m so glad!! The breakfast buffet at the Washington Plaza hotel is one of the best American breakfast buffets I think I’ve ever had. They had everything you could possibly want for breakfast and that is one of my criteria. They had an egg station and I chose that every day. I got an egg either over easy with fried veggies or scrambled with veggies. Their hot food choices were great too. Green beans for breakfast? Why not?!?! And they were delicious! Most mornings they had roasted potatoes, our last morning the spuds were still good, I just preferred the roasted spuds. One morning there were roasted tomatoes instead of the green beans and those were quite good too! Photos of the hotel’s breakfast bar and my plates from two different mornings:
We had some great lunches too, mostly sit down places and one cafe, the Pavilion Cafe located on the mall next to the National Gallery of Art. The food’s pretty good and I just like being amongst the sculptures. I also ate at one of the newest Cava restaurants and that too was great! It’s similar to the Naf Naf Grill that we have in the twin cities area. Both use the same format as Chipotle where you build a meal. I usually get a salad bowl with hummus and other toppings. Cava has way more choices than Naf Naf as well as some great tasting teas.
I looked around the area of the Portrait Gallery for a place all four of us (hubby, me, my sister and nephew) would like for lunch and I scored with Zaytinya! Oh my, this place was fabulous! Truly, if you’re in the area, do check them out. It’s one of the many restaurants run by José Andrés and now I’ve been to three of them. Each as great as the next. Zaytinya is billed as serving Greek, Turkish and Lebanese food. Everything we ordered was so tasty. I wrote a review for Tripadvisor so feel free to check that out if you like.
We also randomly chose the Chop House Brewery for lunch on our last day. We visited the National Archives just before lunch so we wandered up 7th Street and checked out what looked like many great spots and then chose the Chop House. We were greeted warmly and seated immediately. With our drinks came this warm cornbread in a small skillet and we didn’t eat it all. My lunch was perfect and hit the spot. Hubby enjoyed what he had too.
We had two very good dinners in the neighborhood of our hotel. Hubby discovered P.J. Clarke’s after exiting the wrong side of our metro station. He realized his error when he didn’t recognize his surroundings but P.J. Clarke’s caught his eye that day and he stopped in for refreshment. When he saw that they had an oyster bar happy hour, he knew he wanted to come back. That’s where we dined our third night and again, great food, friendly staff and perfect ambiance. He had his oysters at the bar then we moved to the patio for dinner. It was a perfect night to eat on the patio. I even indulged in dessert. A fantastic and rich dessert to end our repast. Yum, yum!! I wrote a review on Tripadvisor for P.J. Clarke’s. Check it out if you’re so inclined.
Our last dinner choice was a bit of a struggle. We were both so tired of walking by our last night so we opted to choose something that was no farther than 5-10 minutes, preferably on the 5 minute side. I know you’re going to find this shocking but again, we scored!! We chose The Pig of course for the location but it gets great reviews and I can see why. We got there just before the dinner rush and it was nice to have a bit of quiet after our many days of touring the city. Friendly staff once again, great locally sourced food and most meals contain something pig-related. One different thing that The Pig does is they offer 3 different sizes of wine glass. I had never heard of that before but I chose the middle size and it was perfect.
I’m amazed that we had such great experiences with just about all of our meals. It really helps to do research ahead of time. I typically look at TripAdvisor reviews when seeking places to eat. You’ll always get a mix of reviews but I try to choose restaurants based on the majority of reviews and so far, that has worked very well. I would recommend each of the places that I talk about here. D.C. certainly has no shortage of great restaurants to choose from!
travels with toby 
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