Restaurants in Arlington may have to do some work to win the favor of The Washington Post’s new food critic.

Elazar Sontag, who moved to D.C. to replace longtime critic Tom Sietsema in late 2025, dined at 189 restaurants to compile a new ranking of the 40 best restaurants in the D.C. area. Not a single Arlington restaurant made his list — although in Falls Church, the Eden Center’s Truong Tien made a strong showing to rank as No. 10.

Sontag spoke highly of Truong Tien’s bun bo Hue — a beef-and-pork soup with a sweet lemongrass broth — along with the banh beo, steamed rice cakes with dried shrimp. And he left open the possibility of even more discoveries at the commercial center that serves as a hub of Northern Virginia’s Vietnamese community.

“There is no strip mall in our region more miraculous or abundant than this indoor-outdoor maze of Vietnamese restaurants, bakeries, flower shops and, if you listen closely from inside the complex, what sounds like more than a few karaoke joints,” the critic wrote. “To name a ‘best’ restaurant at the Falls Church, Virginia, development is to close yourself off to the very real possibility that on your next visit, you will discover a new bowl of soup or platter of grilled meat that changes your life.”

Truong Tien opened in fall 2023 and has earned critical praise ever since, beginning with a gleaming review in The Washington Post and continuing with a regular spot in Washingtonian’s ranking of the region’s top 100 restaurants.

Despite his praise for Falls Church food, Sontag, who moved to D.C.’s Columbia Heights area last fall, tended to favor spots on the other side of the Potomac.

No fewer than 31 of his top 40 restaurants are within D.C.’s borders. Four are in Fairfax (three in the county, one in the city), and another four are in Maryland. None are in Alexandria.

Last October, two Arlington restaurants made The Washington Post’s top 40 list: Ruthie’s All-Day and Our Mom Eugenia. The year before that, Padaek, a Lao and Thai spot in the Arlington Ridge Shopping Center, claimed a place in the ranking.

Despite this year’s outcome, Arlington Restaurant Week remains in full swing through Monday at more than 70 local restaurants.

Kate Bates, president and CEO of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce, told ARLnow that she has been receiving encouraging feedback from restaurants this week, thanks in part to good visibility on social media this year.