Get ready to make some additions to your dining bucket list: High-end Korean steakhouses, intricate tasting menus, craveable Italian — and even a pizza place. These are the restaurants our food critics rated as the 50 Best in Northern Virginia, including our annual Top 10 list.
Price Key: Entrées = $ 15 and under | $$ 16–25 | $$$ 26–40 | $$$$ 41 and over | * = prix fixe only
Quarter-life crisis? Not this hallowed culinary ground, which first served guests in 2002. Chef Bertrand Chemel, who has himself been in the kitchen since 2008, keeps his restaurant fresh with monthly menu updates that course the planet for both the best ingredients and the most creative techniques.
Tasting menus include vegetarian and meaty options, and diners can exercise their right to choose for all five courses. A celebration of the summer harvest might include a buttery kampachi crudo swimming in marbled tomato-tarragon sauce with cherry tomatoes and chive blossoms, then move along to creamy corn espuma dotted with kernels and pickled chanterelles. It’s topped with peanuts and popcorn for an elevated take on summer snacking.
Prefer to sink your teeth into a simple steak? The rib-eye here is the best you’ll find — raised humanely, cooked to your liking, expertly sauced, and accompanied by crispy potatoes.
After nearly two decades in the kitchen at this art-filled icon, Chemel isn’t even close to running out of tricks up his sleeve. And we won’t ever stop eating it up.
Eat This: Yellow corn-chanterelles, grilled Braveheart Farm rib-eye, Amaretto & Chocolate
A flash of tableside flames from sizzling saganaki is every bit as rousing as what you’ll find in Athens.
White curtains billow like sails, conversations drift in half a dozen languages, and servers nudge you toward a glass of crisp Assyrtiko from the restaurant’s delightful Greek wine list.
Begin with the trio of housemade dips — cool dill-sparked tzatziki, smoky eggplant, and creamy Santorini-style fava crowned with diced purple onion — which arrives with slices of freshly baked pita still warm from the oven. Each bite is a postcard from the islands.