Jessica Sidman

3 days ago | washingtonian.com | Jessica Sidman

Marcus DC. 222 M St., NE. Marcus Samuelsson—the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised celebrity chef behind Harlem’s famed Red Rooster—has spent a lot of time in DC over the decades, between visiting extended family, operating a short-lived restaurant at the MGM National Harbor, and checking out the Ethiopian dining scene. “Coming in the nineties, it was always that place where I was really inspired by the mom and pops, Adams Morgan, and everything that happened.

4 days ago | washingtonian.com | Jessica Sidman

The wage for tipped restaurant workers will not rise from $10 to $12 this July as planned. Instead, the DC Council voted 8 to 4 today to pause the pay bump until October following a push by Mayor Muriel Bowser to repeal Initiative 82, the DC law that incrementally eliminates the system that allows gratuities to count toward base wages.

5 days ago | washingtonian.com | Jessica Sidman

Filipino cafe Hiraya, and its modern upstairs sister restaurant, Kayu, will close on H Street Northeast after June 30 as chef Paolo Dungca and his business partners part ways. But a more casual Kayu will reemerge at a new location near Dupont Circle this summer. The split between Dungca and father/son co-owners Juan and Jeremy Canlas centered around differing ideas of how to move forward as the business struggled to bring in enough traffic.

1 week ago | washingtonian.com | Jessica Sidman

It costs up to $500,000 to join Executive Branch, the new private club for the MAGA elite in Georgetown. The ultra-exclusive clubhouse counts Donald Trump Jr. as a founder, along with a cadre of the President’s megadonors and crypto titans. The club will offer fewer than 200 memberships, and there’s already a waitlist, according to the New York Times. The expectation is that the President himself will make appearances, just as he did at the DC Trump hotel during his first White House term.

1 week ago | washingtonian.com | Jessica Sidman

The Naisho Room at the Watermark Hotel, 1825 Capital One Dr., S., TysonsA new Tokyo-style cocktail bar called the Naisho Room boasts a hidden location in Tysons’ Watermark Hotel with no signs or online menu—”just a whisper of its existence” (and, um, a press release to go with it). The place has been quietly open for a month, but it’s already claiming to be “one of the hardest reservations to secure in the DC area.”Like many modern day “speakeasies,” the secret bar is very into social media.