WASHINGTON, D.C. (Wonderful America) — Washington, D.C. feeds you just like the United Nations on a lunch break.
We’re again with Let’s Eat — a food-fueled dash by way of American cities that don’t all the time get credit score for his or her culinary depth. I’ve eaten my approach by way of Puerto Rican lechón in Charleston, a green curry and Texas BBQ mash-up in San Antonio, and dank Detroit-style slices in a Reno strip mall. However this present was by no means in regards to the meals alone. It’s about what a metropolis exhibits you while you ask to be fed. And D.C.? It didn’t simply present me what it had — it launched me to who it’s. I got here to Washington anticipating jumbo slices and politics. As an alternative, I obtained a crash course on world delicacies.
D.C. stunned me. Not with how good the meals was — that I anticipated. However with how a lot of the world confirmed up on my plate. Ethiopian, Tex-Mex, Taiwanese-Cambodian fusion, Afro-Caribbean. Each cease on this tour jogged my memory that meals is how we root ourselves in unfamiliar soil. It’s how we go on reminiscence. It’s how we are saying, “I used to be right here. And I made one thing good.”
We began sturdy at La Tejana, a Tex-Mex breakfast taco spot that dropped me proper again into my years residing in Texas. Their 956 taco is known as after the realm code of the Decrease and Center Rio Grande Valley: molten queso, fried potatoes, and refried beans wrapped in a home made flour tortilla with simply the correct amount of chew. The primary chunk gave me goosebumps.
At Donut Run, I picked up a Boston Cream donut so fluffy and wealthy I needed to double-check it was vegan. Spoiler: it was. However there was nothing “lite” about it. It was heavy for its measurement, overstuffed with vegan cream, chocolatey and completely indulgent. It was a reminder that plant-based can nonetheless punch you within the candy tooth.
Then we hit Smokey’s, and I’m nonetheless serious about these wings. Fried to a golden crackle and drenched in mumbo sauce — a tangy, candy, uniquely D.C. creation — they have been easy, excellent, and deeply comforting. The lady behind the counter has been cooking there for 5 a long time, and you may style yearly of expertise. We needed to order seconds as a result of I ate all of them with out giving my digicam man/ partner-in-crime, Brandon, an opportunity to take a shot of them.
Ben’s Chili Bowl was subsequent, and in case you’re in D.C. and don’t attempt a half-smoke there, you’re doing it mistaken. It’s been holding court docket on U Road since 1958 — a beacon by way of the civil rights motion, the riots, the rebuild, and the waves of gentrification. The partitions are coated in pictures of presidents and performers, however the actual star is the chili canine. Complicated. Daring. Somewhat tough across the edges. Like the town itself.
Duccini’s gave us the jumbo slice of our desires — large, greasy with an excellent foot lengthy cheese pull. The form of pizza you eat standing up on the sidewalk at 2 a.m. whereas making a psychological listing of your regrets. It was excellent.
After which got here Chercher. My first time consuming Ethiopian meals, and I used to be not ready. The doro wat was spicy and wealthy, with bone-in hen that fell aside on the mere contact of injera — that spongy, earthy, barely bitter flatbread that turned each utensil and revelation. It stunned me. I find it irresistible when meals does that.
At Makketto, the fried hen sandwich landed laborious. Deeply seasoned, crusted in golden ridges that held each drop of sauce, tucked right into a house-made brioche bun with pickled daikon and jalapeño — it was a road struggle between texture and taste.
At Dogon, I had the enjoyment of consuming my pal Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s meals in an area that looks like half restaurant, half cultural archive. Positioned contained in the Salamander Resort in SW DC, a feminine and Black-owned property, Dogon has solely been open for lower than a 12 months and it is already thought-about one of many high eating places in America. The hoe crab dish — wealthy crab meat served with plantain flour hoecakes — hit residence for me as a Caribbean girl. There’s energy in seeing your components honored.
We closed at Providencia, with a Baked Alaska Frio Frio that was all aptitude and tropical grace, created by one other extremely gifted pal of mine: Chef Paola Velez. This Dominican-inspired dessert combines the theatrical burn of a basic Baked Alaska with the icy sweetness of a Frio Frio — a road deal with from the Caribbean. Leche dulce. Plum guava syrup. Dominican meringue torched to a crisp. An ideal end to a wildly sudden day of consuming.
Washington, D.C. isn’t a metropolis that stays nonetheless. Its heartbeat is fixed movement — folks arriving, passing by way of, doubling again. Possibly that’s why the meals right here doesn’t cling to a single story. It adapts. It blends. It holds tight to its origin story whereas feeding one thing larger. It’s not simply layered — it’s lived-in and deeply human.
Let’s Eat isn’t about chasing the most popular new restaurant flexing meals cred. It’s about listening. Asking questions. Following the scent of charred onions down an unfamiliar block. And consuming just like the solutions matter.
Twelve hours. Ten spots. One metropolis that jogged my memory how meals isn’t simply nourishment — it’s proof of life. It’s the thread that ties us all collectively.
New episodes of Let’s Eat drop month-to-month as we crisscross the nation, telling the actual tales of the individuals who feed America. Subscribe to @AmazingAmericaTV on YouTube and comply with us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook to affix the desk.
Come hungry. Come curious. Let’s Eat.
