3 DC Dining Spots Named Among Best New Restaurants In America

WASHINGTON, DC — The District's high-end restaurants are bouncing back from the depths of the pandemic — and three DC eateries got an extra boost this week, when they were ranked among the best new restaurants in America.

Esquire magazine released this year's version of its annual list on Thursday, comprising 40 newly opened restaurants from across the United States.

Here are the three Washington, D.C., spots that made it:

No. 12 Oyster Oyster, 1440 Eighth Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Esquire says: "The menu leans on the highly sustainable mushroom oyster and the bivalve kind. ..." Chef Rob Rubba serves watermelon with peanuts and oysters (it just works) and a dish of mushroom, corn truffle, and potato that tastes like the forest floor in the best way possible. The $75 bargain of a tasting menu will make you believe that an oystertarian future can be damn delicious and fun."

A Washington Post review of Oyster Oyster in September noted: "Washington has welcomed a host of impressive places to eat around the pandemic ... but none that have excited me more than Oyster Oyster, a fun name for a serious, and seriously delicious, restaurant. The enterprise brings together notions a lot of diners want — food with a point of view, gracious service, distinctive ambiance — while quietly sending the message that you don’t have to eat meat to eat well."

No. 23 Moon Rabbit, 801 Wharf Street SW, Washington, D.C.

Esquire says: "When the fish sandwich arrived — a catfish fillet, delicately flaky in the middle, crunchy on the outside, scented with turmeric and lemongrass, hugged by a pillowy curry milk-bread bun — it was devoured, and immediately we asked for another, and some extra milk bread, too. We did the same with the simple charred cabbage with pineapple. Chef Kevin Tien’s dishes are an exploration not only of Vietnamese cuisine but of maximum craveability."

A Washington Post critic wrote of Moon Rabbit a year ago: "The roll has a rival for my affection: slices of brioche, stacked Once Upon a Mattress-style on a plate with a rich slather of chicken liver pâté and precise dots of apricot jam. My idea of nirvana is to drag my knife through the pâté and jam so one informs the other. "

No. 32 Imperfecto, 1124 Twenty-Third Street NW, Washington D.C.

Esquire says: "Foie gras is served atop a crunchy plantain brioche and a compote of the tropical soursop fruit. The ancient grain salad is an exercise in layers of textures: couscous, quinoa, pickles, sunchoke. Tuna tartare takes a surprising turn with the acid and spice of guajillo chiles and tomatillo."

A Washington Post writer said of it in May: "Just looking at the lineup of seven scoops of colorful sorbets — among them white peach infused with black tea and a bracing Sicilian lemon — refreshes its recipient; a new favorite is just a spoonful away. Pastry chef Genesis Flores uses a ceramic plateau to present her gold leaf-garnished, mascarpone-filled eclair, over which a server pours a stream of coffee anglaise."

The No. 1-ranked restaurant in this year's list is a Manhattan restaurant, Dhamaka, which serves Indian fare within the Lower East Side's Essex Market.