Move over, Brat Summer. The fall dining scene in D.C. is Hot to Go. From a powerful, historically inspired Afro-Caribbean restaurant in a luxe hotel to a funky music record-inspired bar, below is a non-comprehensive list of restaurants and bars that have opened or are planning to open over the next several months. Dōgon Famed chef Kwame Onwauche makes his celebrated return to Washington, D.C.
with the opening of Dōgon near the Southwest Waterfront. In 2017, Onwauche, just in his mid-20s, ran Shaw Bijou; and then later Kith and Kin on the Wharf.
Now, Dōgon is an ambitious project inside the equally ambitious Salamander Hotel, linking the storied history of freed Black man Benjamin Banneker who surveyed the Nation’s Capital, with Onwauche’s Afro-Cuban background and connection to the West African Dōgon people.
Art and symbolism imbue the royal-purple space serving dishes like an “H Street Chicken” with jollof rice. Dōgon will be Onwuachi’s second restaurant opening in a year, following the acclaimed Tatiana in New York.